This looks very promising, too bad it's only for Ubuntu at the moment
though. As the article said, this would have the biggest impact on servers,
and for me that's RHEL.

A couple points it raises though, what about kernel version numbering? When
you execute uname -r it returns the kernel version, and a lot of
installation scripts in enterprise packages use this to determine what
kernel headers to compile against, I wonder if Ksplice will take that into
consideration.

It is also good that they take the patches out of the distribution's
repository because, again for enterprise, those distros are supported for 7
years, with that in mind they rarely change the base kernel version but will
backport a lot of features from later kernels into the "older" one. For
example one of the servers we run returns a kernel version of
2.6.9-89.ELsmp. This is the base kernel 2.6.9, a pretty "old" kernel, but
internally RedHat has patched and backported fixes and features into this
kernel enough times to warrant the -89 sub-version number. The ELsmp simply
means Enterprise Linux and
SMP<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric_multiprocessing>Kernel.
This approach gives RedHat's partners stability because they know
that this version, RHEL4, has a stable kernel
ABI<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_binary_interface>based on
kernel 2.6.9 that wont change from sub-version to sub-version and
they can write their applications and drivers against it.


On Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 12:39 AM, Trevor Christian <doubleOTeC@...>wrote:

> Linux is famous for uptime, but even it has to reboot when a new kernel
> vulnerability is fixed. Or does it? Now there’s Ksplice, technology that
> applies patches directly into the running kernel. And thanks to their free
> Uptrack service it’s free for users of Ubuntu!
> http://www.linux-mag.com/cache/7403/1.html
>
> Regards,
> Trevor "TeC" Christian
> Cell #: (868) 687 0436 / (767) 225 4472
> Home Page (http://www.trevorchristian.com/)
>
>
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>
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--
"Asking the wrong questions is the leading cause of wrong answers."


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