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Canonical offers a Livepatch service but it requires credentials and, more importantly, doesn't work on non-LTS versions like 17.04

Livepatchd error: Only Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is supported, exiting.

Is there an alternative livepatch client that isn't dependent on the current Canonical implementation?

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    No. It does not work only on LTS. It ONLY works on 16.04. And no you need canonical.
    – Rinzwind
    Aug 3, 2017 at 17:42
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    It now works on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS too. They are still working on improving it. Sep 29, 2017 at 7:14

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I am currently looking into this too. I found KernelCare from CloudLinux that works on Ubuntu, I have tested it successfully now only for a month with the free trial, I like it more then livepatch from Canonical. Good thing is that if you don't like it you can turn live updates off. It also has an option to run automatically. Your non-kernel apps are updated like before with apt update.

Because of Canonical's crazy pricing, 3 machines free but after that $750 / year / server I will never consider that fair pricing. $750 is more than I pay for rent per server per year and I have many servers now, I could not find any information about buying just the livepatch service on buy.canonical.com.

I found an article about a downside to KernelCare: The downside though is that KernelCare appears to rely upon some binary blobs as part of its service., but I am not sure what it really means and if it is still true, I am going to give it a try anyway.

I am not affiliated with KernelCare, and to be honest, I would rather pay Cannonical $2.25 / month to livepatch my kernel, but I am not there yet to pay $62,5 / month / server to Canonical, with minimum invoice of $2500, but you also have to buy it in bulks of 10, so $7500 / year minimum for standard dedicated servers.

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    "Because of Canonical's crazy pricing" Sorry but you are NOT the intended target. It is intended for business and not for personal desktops. 750 USD is NOTHING for a company if the uptime is kept. 5 minutes of downtime or even worse, a botched boot, is worth the 750USD.
    – Rinzwind
    Feb 28, 2018 at 15:59
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    Yes you are right, I am not the target market, but you maybe meant nothing for BIG company, I have only about 90 servers running, I am a small company, but if I installed the 750 USD Advantage everywhere, I would have to rise my prices over my competition, so Canonical should consider some middle ground, because not everybody is running IT for bank or government, I wonder if there are some small businesses willing to pay this price.
    – Mike
    Feb 28, 2018 at 16:08
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    Prices are not cast in stone. Your account rep can negotiate. Make them what you deem to be a fair offer and see what they say. They may want 7.5k but 2k is better than 0k on the P&L statement. Feb 28, 2018 at 18:13
  • Why does Livepatch require signing in with an Ubuntu Single Sign-On Account? Apr 3, 2019 at 7:24
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    @AaronFranke I'd assume just the license terms and ethics. Rather than trying to get a paid service for free, I think the question you should be asking instead is "where are the instructions to build my own livepatch server"?
    – bobpaul
    May 14, 2019 at 19:22

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