14 DAY TRIAL // Canonical has announced today the availability of its Kernel Livepatch service for users of the Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating system series, now that it supports the Snappy technologies.
Until today, Canonical's Kernel Livepatch service was available only for those running the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) operating system series, providing them with rebootless kernel upgrades. Starting today, you can use the Canonical Kernel Livepatch service on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS too.
As usual, Canonical lets users install its Kernel Livepatch service on up to three (3) computers for free, but only on systems running 64-bit Intel or AMD processors. Those who want to enable Canonical Kernel Livepatch on more than 3 machines will have to purchase the Ubuntu Advantage support package.
"We are pleased to announce that we have extended our Canonical Kernel Livepatch Service to users running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS," reads the announcement. "The Canonical Kernel Livepatch Service enables runtime correction of critical security vulnerabilities in the kernel without the need to reboot."
Here's how to enable Canonical Kernel Livepatch on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Installing the Canonical Kernel Livepatch service on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) operating systems is possible because the Snapd 2.20 release announced in December 2016 brought support for this long-term supported version of Ubuntu Linux. And it's super easy to install both Snapd and Canonical Kernel Livepatch.
First, you'll have to make sure that you're running the Linux 4.4 kernel. Then, open the Terminal app and paste the command listed below to install the Snapd daemon, which enables installation of Snap packages on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Access https://ubuntu.com/livepatch and get your free kernel livepatch token.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install snapd
The token should look like this [d3b07384d213edec49eaa6238ad5ff00] so make sure you keep it safe somewhere. To install and enable the Canonical Kernel Livepatch service, run the following commands in the Terminal app, but replace the token in the second command with your own.
sudo snap install canonical-livepatch
sudo canonical-livepatch enable d3b07384d113edec49eaa6238ad5ff00
That’s it. You can check to see if you're running the Canonical Kernel Livepatch service on your Ubuntu 14.04 LTS machine at any time with the following command. If it says "true" under the fully-patched entry, then it means you're running the latest available kernel for your system.
canonical-livepatch status