2.1 Installing the Ksplice Enhanced Client From ULN

The Ksplice Enhanced client is available as either an online client, which requires the server to have a direct connection to the Oracle Uptrack server. Or, alternatively, you can use the Ksplice Enhanced client as an offline client, which requires access to a local ULN mirror. See Section 1.3, “Preparing to Use Oracle Ksplice”.

Caution

The following procedure applies to Oracle Linux releases only. If you plan to use Ksplice to patch the Xen hypervisor on Oracle VM 3.4.5 and later releases, refer to the documentation for the Oracle VM release that you are running for step-by-step instructions. For example, if you are running Oracle VM 3.4.5, see Updating Oracle VM Server With Oracle Ksplice in the Oracle VM Administration Guide for Release 3.4.

The system on which you install the enhanced client, must meet the following additional requirements:

Must be registered with ULN or have access to the ULN channels on a mirror.
Must have access to the Internet or a host that is running a local ULN mirror. See Section 1.3.3, “Configuring a Local ULN Mirror to Act as a Ksplice Mirror”.
Must be running either the Oracle Linux 6 or Oracle Linux 7 operating system, with a supported version of either the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel or the Red Hat Compatible Kernel installed.
Note
The Ksplice Enhanced client is not available on Oracle Linux 5.
You can verify the kernel version by using the uname -a command. See Section 1.1.1, “Supported Kernels”.
Must be running the same kernel that you want to update. It is assumed that the currently running kernel is the one that you want to update, as Ksplice applies updates only to the running kernel.

The following procedure describes how to install the enhanced client and Ksplice-aware libraries from ULN:

Using a browser, log in at https://linux.oracle.com with the ULN user name and password that you used to register the system, then perform the following steps:
1. On the Systems tab, click the link named for your system in the list of registered machines.
2. On the System Details page, click Manage Subscriptions.
  The Ksplice Enhanced client and Ksplice aware user-space packages are available in the following channels on ULN:
  - Ksplice for Oracle Linux 6 (x86_64) (ol6_x86_64_ksplice)
  - Ksplice for Oracle Linux 7 (x86_64) (ol7_x86_64_ksplice)
  - Ksplice aware user-space packages for Oracle Linux 6 (x86_64) (ol6_x86_64_userspace_ksplice)
  - Ksplice aware user-space packages for Oracle Linux 7 (x86_64) (ol7_x86_64_userspace_ksplice)
3. On the System Summary page, select both the User space Ksplice channel and the Ksplice channel from the list of available channels, then click the right arrow (>) to move them to the list of subscribed channels.
4. Accept the licensing terms for the Ksplice Enhanced client packages.
5. Click Save Subscriptions and log out of ULN.
If you use an Internet proxy, configure the HTTP and HTTPS settings for the proxy in the shell as follows:
- For the sh, ksh, or bash shells, use commands such as the following:
```
# http_proxy=http://proxy_URL:http_port
# https_proxy=http://proxy_URL:https_port
# export http_proxy https_proxy
```
  For the csh shell, use commands such as the following:
```
# setenv http_proxy=http://proxy_URL:http_port
# setenv https_proxy=http://proxy_URL:https_port
```
Log in as root on the system.
If prelink is installed, revert all prelinked binaries and dependent libraries to their original state and use the yum command to remove the prelink package.
```
# prelink -au
# yum remove prelink
```
Note
prelink is installed and enabled by default on Oracle Linux 6 but not on Oracle Linux 7.
Install the ksplice package.
```
# yum install -y ksplice
```
The access key for Ksplice Uptrack is retrieved from ULN and added to /etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf, as shown in the following example:
```
[Auth]
accesskey = 0e1859ad8aea14b0b4306349142ce9160353297daee30240dab4d61f4ea4e59b
```
The packages that are installed on the system include the following:
ksplice-core
Contains the shared user-space libraries, such as glibc and openssl, that support Ksplice patching.
ksplice-helper
Contains a helper library that enables user-space executables to be patched by Ksplice.
ksplice-helper-devel
Contains the development environment for creating user-space libraries that support Ksplice patching.
ksplice-tools
Contains the ksplice executable and ksplice(8) man page.
Update the system to install the Ksplice aware versions of the user-space libraries:
```
# yum update
```
To install only the libraries and not update any other packages, limit the update to the ol6_x86_64_userspace_ksplice or ol7_x86_64_userspace_ksplice channel, as appropriate:
```
# yum --disablerepo=* --enablerepo=ol6_x86_64_userspace_ksplice update
```
You can also use the following command:
```
# yum update glibc* openssl*
```
You can also use this client to perform kernel updates, in the same way that you are able to use the standard Uptrack client:
```
# yum install uptrack-updates-`uname -r`
```
To enable the automatic installation of updates, change the entry in the /etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf file from no to yes, as shown in the following example:
```
autoinstall = yes
```
Reboot the system so that it uses the new libraries.
On Oracle Linux 6:
```
# reboot
```
On Oracle Linux 7:
```
# systemctl reboot
```

The enhanced client uses the same configuration file (/etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf) as Ksplice Uptrack. See Section 3.3, “Configuring a Ksplice Uptrack Client”.

To manage the enhanced client, use the ksplice command, see Section 2.2, “Managing the Ksplice Enhanced Client With the ksplice Command”.