Ksplice
 |
|
A screenshot of the Ksplice Uptrack with applied updates
|
|
| Developer(s) | Ksplice, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Initial release | April 23, 2008 |
| Stable release |
0.9.9.1 / July 28, 2011
|
| Operating system | Linux |
| Type | Kernel extension |
| License | GNU GPL version 2 |
| Website | www |
Ksplice is an open-source extension of the Linux kernel that allows security patches to be applied to a running kernel without the need for reboots, avoiding downtimes and improving availability (a technique broadly referred to as dynamic software updating). Ksplice supports only the patches that do not make significant semantic changes to kernel's data structures.
Ksplice has been implemented for Linux on the IA-32 and x86-64 architectures. It was developed by Ksplice, Inc. until 21 July 2011, when Oracle acquired Ksplice and started offering support for Oracle Linux. Support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux was dropped and turned into a free 30-day trial for RHEL customers as an incentive to migrate to Oracle Linux Premier Support. At the same time, use of the Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) became a requirement for using Ksplice on production systems.
As of July 2015[update], Ksplice is available for free on desktop Linux installations, with official support available for Fedora and Ubuntu Linux distributions.
Ksplice takes as input a unified diff and the original kernel source code, and it updates the running kernel in memory. Using Ksplice does not require any preparation before the system is originally booted, (the running kernel needs no special prior compiling, for example). In order to generate an update, Ksplice must determine what code within the kernel has been changed by the source code patch. Ksplice performs this analysis at the Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) object code layer, rather than at the C source code layer.
...
Wikipedia