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Can I use Canonical Livepatch on my Arch Linux Desktop?

I have look around and I can't see a detailed list about which OS are really supported.

I have found that only debian-based have installed this using Snap from the Users by distribution section on https://snapcraft.io/canonical-livepatch.

Thanks!

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    Close voters: Canonical tools are on topic here. Yes, the OP is not running Ubuntu, but the question is about a Canonical tool so that is what makes it on topic. See askubuntu.com/help/on-topic and note the "Services provided by Ubuntu and Canonical."
    – terdon on strike
    Nov 8, 2018 at 9:53
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    @terdon since we don't support snapd on other OSs, I don't see why this should be on-topic.
    – muru
    Nov 9, 2018 at 23:37
  • Please take a look at linux-audit.com/… , you may find something helpful.
    – mook765
    Nov 10, 2018 at 16:13

1 Answer 1

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Quoting https://assets.ubuntu.com/v1/ac3aa269-DS_Canonical_Livepatch_Service_screen-AW_08.17.pdf :

The Canonical Livepatch Service lets you apply critical
kernel security fixes to your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 14.04 LTS systems without rebooting.

[...]

System requirements

Canonical’s Livepatches are available for the generic flavour of the 64-bit Intel/AMD (aka, x86_64, amd64) builds of the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial) kernel, which is a Linux 4.4 kernel, as well as Ubuntu 14.04 LTS running the Linux 4.4 Hardware Enablement kernel.

Canonical Livepatches work on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 14.04 LTS Servers and Desktops, on physical machines, virtual machines, and in the cloud. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS systems must use the Hardware Enablement kernel.

So to sum up, at least at this document's time of writing, Livepatch was only available for the 4.4 kernel series of the currently supported Ubuntu LTS releases.

Today 18.04 LTS with the 4.15 kernel is supported too, according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Livepatch

Anyway, to come back to your actual question, I strongly believe that Livepatch is not compatible with any foreign non-Ubuntu kernel builds. As Arch has nothing to do with Canonical and Ubuntu, it should not be supported.

However (even though it's off-topic for this site), Arch seemingly supports other kernel live patching tools like kpatch: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kernel_live_patching

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  • So, I don't understand why there are canonical livepatch installations on Debian or ElementaryOS. There are stuck on the same kernel version than Ubuntu 18.04? Or maybe the installation on Debian cannot be configurated and it's just that: 'a useless installation'.
    – user3198165
    Nov 6, 2018 at 11:55
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    I believe as Elementary is based on Ubuntu and probably uses the same kernels (correct me if wrong), Livepatch should work there too (just like on other Ubuntu flavours like Xubuntu, Kubuntu, ...). However, as Debian is upstream of Ubuntu and definitely does not use Canonical's Ubuntu kernels, I can't imagine that Livepatch would work there, so I guess (without being able to back up that claim at the moment) that the Livepatch snap would indeed be useless on Debian systems...
    – Byte Commander ♦
    Nov 6, 2018 at 12:03
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    Note that this isn't actually off topic. Questions about Canonical tools are on topic here.
    – terdon on strike
    Nov 8, 2018 at 9:54

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