October 29, 2009, 8:12 am
How’d you like to never have to reboot a Linux box again — no, not even if you have to apply a kernel-level patch? That’s the promise of Ksplice, a software technology for Linux (and maybe soon other platforms) designed to allow a system to be patched from the kernel level on up without having to be restarted. It’s available right now for Ubuntu, and from what I can see, it’s not digital snake oil.
The idea may seem complicated, but the implementation isn’t. If you’re running Ubuntu 9.04 or 9.10, all you need to do is install the Ksplice client, called Ksplice Uptrack, by downloading and setting up a .deb package file. Once it’s installed, you’ll see an icon in the system tray (the “K with the warning sign” in the picture below) which alerts you whenever there’s a kernel-level update that needs to be applied…
