Take the Tour
A Ksplice Uptrack subscription gets you so much more than rebootless kernel updates!
Quick links
- For a quick overview of Ksplice Uptrack's features, see our features page.
- For answers to commonly-asked questions, see our FAQ.
- Want to know more about how Ksplice works? Read our whitepaper.
- Ready to try it out? Sign up and install Uptrack.
Uptrack command line tools
uptrack-upgrade
Ksplice updates are the same security and bugfix updates you would get from your
Linux vendor, packaged in a special rebootless form. To apply Ksplice updates,
just run uptrack-upgrade:
You can apply all available updates, bringing your system instantly up to date,
by running uptrack-upgrade -y, or you can apply updates
individually by specifying a Ksplice ID (the characters in brackets in
the screen shot).
uptrack-show
You can see what updates have been installed by
running uptrack-show:
You can see what updates are available to be installed by
running uptrack-show --available:
uptrack-remove
Removing Ksplice updates is easy: just run uptrack-remove. As
with uptrack-upgrade, you can uninstall all updates, bringing you
back to your original stock kernel, or uninstall individual updates by
specifying a Ksplice ID:
uptrack-uname
Ksplice Uptrack does not change the output of uname,
and uname will continue to reflect the version of the kernel into
which a machine was booted.
Instead, once you install updates, use uptrack-uname to see what
effective kernel a machine is running. uptrack-uname has the
same format as uname and supports the common uname
flags, including -r and -a.
Before installing updates, the original kernel and effective kernel are the
same, and uname and uptrack-uname report the same
information:
After installing updates, uptrack-uname reflects the updated
running kernel:
You can also see a machine's effective kernel on your web interface or through our API.
Automatic updates
You can configure your systems to automatically install updates as they become
available. To enable autoinstall, set autoinstall = yes in
your /etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf, or pass
the --autoinstall flag during installation.
Autoinstall is our most popular configuration. It is a scalable way to ensure that updates get installed quickly as they become available, regardless of when they are released.
Please note that enabling autoinstall does not mean the Uptrack client itself is automatically upgraded. You will be notified via e-mail when a new Uptrack client is available, and it can be upgraded through your package manager.
Your package manager
Ksplice Uptrack updates your running kernel in memory. We recommended that, in addition to using Ksplice, you continue to use your package manager to update the kernel on disk as new kernels become available. That way, if a reboot becomes necessary (e.g. power loss or a hardware upgrade) you have the option of booting into a newer kernel. Under this plan, you would install all the updates available via both Ksplice Uptrack and your package manager.
Ksplice Uptrack also works great in environments where it is desirable to stay with a particular original kernel version (e.g. because of third party modules that are compiled against that kernel) but you want to stay up to date with all the important security and reliability updates for your kernel.
By default, Ksplice Uptrack will reinstall rebootless updates during the boot
process. That way you remain secure even after a reboot. You can configure this
behavior with
the install_on_reboot option in
your /etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf.
Firewall and proxy configuration
The Uptrack client communicates with the Uptrack server by connecting
to https://updates.ksplice.com:443. You can either make your
firewall allow those connections, or configure the Uptrack client to use a proxy
server.
To configure Ksplice Uptrack to use a proxy server, edit your
/etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf and set the
https_proxy option (in the [Network]
section) to a value of the form
[protocol://]host[:port].
Graphical interface
This feature is currently available for Ubuntu 13.04, 12.10, 12.04, 11.10, 11.04, and
10.04 LTS, and Fedora 18 and 17.
If you'd like to see it for your distribution, please contact
us.
After Ksplice Uptrack is installed, a panel icon will notify you when new kernel updates are available:
You can click on the icon to view the available updates:
Click the "Install all updates" button to start the update process. A progress bar shows you the updates as they are being installed:
When the process is complete, the update list will look like this:
The panel icon will also return to normal:
Your kernel is now up to date and secure!
Web interface
A Ksplice Uptrack subscription comes with a web interface which summarizes important information about your machines and will tell you if Ksplice is currently working on new updates for your distributions. Log in to your Uptrack web interface at https://uptrack.ksplice.com.
Overview
See what machines are up to date and what machines need attention in one easy summary on your overview page:
Beyond machines with available updates, the overview page also has notifications for:
- rebootless updates currently in progress for your distributions
- new Uptrack client releases
- inactive machines: those that have stopped using Uptrack or can't communicate with the Uptrack servers
and more. You can also group your machines for easy management.
Machine detail pages
Get an in-depth look at your machine's status on its machine detail page, including the available and installed updates, basic system information, uptime, and when it last communicated with an Uptrack server:
Access policies
Want an extra layer of control over which machines using your access can can use the Uptrack service? Maybe you manage Uptrack-enabled machines for other people and want to let them use the service while still having control over which machines have access.
It's easy to customize your Uptrack access policies to get the access control you want!
You can set access policies for individual or groups of existing machines as well as set a default access policy for new machines. For example, you might use a default deny policy, in which machines that have newly installed Uptrack cannot receive updates from the Uptrack servers until you specifically authorize them:
Read more on our access policies page.
Notification and monitoring
Email notifications
When new rebootless updates are available for one of your distributions, we'll send an announcement to your technical contact address (you can configure this address on the settings page of your web interface).
Monitoring
Aside from the command line tools and web interface, Ksplice has two ways to help you monitor your machines:
- The Uptrack API. Use our REST API directly or download our Python bindings. The bindings come with scripts to monitor individual and groups of machines and to change the authorization for machines.
- Nagios plugins, for easy integration into your existing monitoring infrastructure.
The Python bindings and Nagios plugin can be installed through your package manager or from a tarball on our website.