Ubuntu updates say that I can use Livepatch

Ubuntu
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Hello all, when I get updates for my Ubuntu 18.04 I get a reminder that I can use Livepatch to keep my laptop secure between restarts ? How can I do this? I don’t find it in the Ubuntu software. Thank you for any info on this. Ray

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Hi Ray, the best person to answer this will @abhishek in the meanwhile I found this https://www.ubuntu.com/livepatch I don’t know if it will help with anything or not as I don’t use Ubuntu so couldn’t really say

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Thank you ElectricDandySlider, I’ll look into it.

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Live patching is essentially a server thing where restarts matter a lot. What it means is that when there are kernel updates from Ubuntu, you won’t need to restart your system in order to apply those patches.

You might have noticed that Ubuntu prompts you to restart your system after updates, sometimes. On desktop it’s not an issue because you probably shutdown your system often. But on servers, a system restart could result in website/app/service downtime. This is why live patching is used.

Ubuntu has recently enabled this feature for desktop system as well. Though I don’t think it’s a critical feature but if you want to use it, you can find it in Software & Updates:

live-patching
live-patching1055×648 294 KB

You’ll need to create an Ubuntu ID in order to use this feature: Cookies required

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Thanks for the explanation Abhishek, Guess I don’t need it. Ray

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Checked ‘Updates’ tab and it’s not an available option in Xubuntu 18.10. So is it only “Ubuntu vanilla” that has it or some other flavours too ??

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Livepatch is only available for LTS releases (e.g. 16.04 and 18.04)…

Hardly seems worth it - I have run it on my home laptop and desktops - there are still updates that prompt you to reboot/restart even with livepatch installed…

Here’s my Ubuntu 18.04.2 laptop “motd” after logging in over ssh :

Welcome to Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 4.15.0-46-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

 * Ubuntu's Kubernetes 1.14 distributions can bypass Docker and use containerd
   directly, see https://bit.ly/ubuntu-containerd or try it now with

     snap install microk8s --classic

 * AWS Greengrass is now available for all your Ubuntu IoT event processing.
   See https://bit.ly/Greengrass_snap for the story of Prologis and Rigado
   building warehouse apps in Lambda at the edge.

     https://snapcraft.io/aws-iot-greengrass

 * Canonical Livepatch is enabled.
   - All available patches applied.

21 packages can be updated.
0 updates are security updates.

*** System restart required ***

So I can’t really see the point in it…

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