Applying updates to an active kernel with Ksplice

Clever Helper for Some Scenarios

Ksplice includes clever mechanisms to support hot kernel updates at the binary level. Despite intelligent code pushing and vector analysis, administrators should be aware that they do need to check manually on a case-by-case basis to determine whether the tool is useful. Ksplice is useful for simple cases, but it is no replacement for a hardware failover solution in situations that require high system availability.

Infos

  1. "Ksplice: An Automatic System for Rebootless Linux Kernel Security Updates" by Jeffrey Brian Arnold, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, http://web.mit.edu/ksplice/doc/ksplice.pdf
  2. Ksplice download and installation: http://web.mit.edu/ksplice/
  3. GNU binutils and BFD library: http://sourceware.org/binutils/
  4. Announcement and discussion on the Linux Kernel mailing list: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/669951

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