Of course one might think such a technology would be difficult at best to use. Not so. The developers of Ksplice have created an incredibly easy to use system that allows the administrator to handle critical updates, normally requiring a reboot, as easily as those updates that do not require a reboot.

Getting such a system working does requiring the installation of third party software. This tutorial will walk you through installing Ksplice as well as how to go about updating a currently running kernel with the new system.

Installing Ksplice

Figure 1

To install Ksplice navigate your browser to the Ksplice Uptrack page and click on the link for your particular distribution. If you are using Ubuntu the Gdebi installer will be an option to select from (see Figure 1) . Select Open with and then make sure GDebi is selected. Click OK and the installation will commence.

During the installation a new window will open specific to Ksplice. In this window you will have to agree to a License and then click Forward. Once you have done this the installation will complete.

Using Ksplice

Figure 2

After install is finished Ksplice will automatically open up the update window (see Figure 2) and reveal to you if there are any updates for your currently running kernel. This might very well remind you of the average Linux package management front-end.

In order to install the update(s) click the Install All Updates button to take care of any updates pending.

You will also notice a new icon added to your Notification Area (see Figure 3). This Icon will not only allow you to launch the

Figure 3

Ksplice tool, it will also keep you informed if there are any updates available. Figure 3 shows the Ksplice icon with a pending update.  When your system is up to date the “!” will disappear and leave you with a clean “K” icon.

Command line

What Linux tool is complete without a command line component? Ksplice includes four command line tools for your terminal pleasure:

• uptrack-upgrade: This command will download and install the latest kernel updates available for your system.
• uptrack-install PACKAGE: Will install a specific update (Where PACKAGE is the package name to update.)
• uptrack-remove PACKAGE : Will remove a specific update (Where PACKAGE is the package name to remove).
• uptrack-show PACKAGE: Will show more detail about a specific update (Where PACKAGE is the package name).

Final thoughts

I have been using Linux (and computers) for quite some time. I never thought I would see the day when such a major update to the underlying sub-systems could be pulled off without a reboot. And not only that, it is done as simply as using a GUI interface.  But now we are looking at something special. Ksplice is only now beginning to make serious inroads into reaching that goal of 100% uptime. And now, without having to reboot after a major upgrade, that 100% number is looking closer and closer every day.

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The Yahoo Server Monitor Widget is a nice to have widget that is displaying several information about a server on the user’s desktop. It is by far not a complete solution but it works quite nicely for the time the user is working on the PC.

The Server Monitor Widget displays information like CPU Load, Server Uptime, Hard Disk Space, Server Address and Cache which is nice for a quick overview. It pulls the data from the free phpSysInfo script that has to be installed on the server.

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Once you have grown your traffic to a fairly decent amount, however, downtimes that affect your site are a complete different story, a nuisance that can mean that hundreds of people are unable to get to your site, most of whom are likely to never come back again. In my experience, even when my hosting company promised 99.8% uptime, this began to increasingly seem like meaningless marketing hype when I started getting emails from friends and strangers alike informing me that my site was down at such and such an hour (many of which downtimes occurred in the early am hours when I wouldn’t have been online anyway).

I also noticed that the net effect of this was that I was becoming a bit paranoid; if my traffic seemed lower than it usually is I immediately wondered if me site had been down. I started looking for a resource that would monitor my site for downtimes and inform me automatically so I didn’t have to spend time wondering about it. This is when I found Montastic.

Montastic is a very simple service: create an account then enter in the URLs of the sites you would like it to monitor (up to a limit of 100 sites). It will then check the sites on your list within 10 minute intervals and from 2 locations. If and when it detects that any of the sites are down, it will immediately report this by email or through RSS. Once the site is back up it will report that as well.

What’s interesting about Montastic is that you are not limited to just your sites. After listing my 3 websites I decided to include 2 blogs that are similar to my main blog just for benchmarking purposes. To my surprise I discovered that while my site went down for about 2 hours once this week, these other sites seemed to be down for a few hours at least every other day, which was interesting to know, and made me think that perhaps my hosting company isn’t so bad after all.

Montastic was created by a team of “open source fanatics” that developed it for their own use and decided to make it available to everyone as a 100% free service.

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