[CentOS] kpatch (live kernel patching) in CentOS 7.7?

[Lamar Owen]

On 10/4/19 9:35 AM, Phelps, Matthew wrote:
> ...
> I'm still puzzled why RedHat is doing it then, and making it more 
> generally available (to paying customers even), if it's so dire a 
> proposition that it will fail so badly, so often. That seems 
> counter-intuitive to me. 

It would likely boil down to a risk-benefit analysis; for RHEL RH is 
willing to take the risks associated with it due to the added benefits 
of offering it.  And, well, the elephant in the room is that it is one 
of the things that make an RHEL subscription more attractive, whether 
that's an intended effect or not. Ubuntu/Canonical apparently made a 
different analysis, per another poster in-thread.

Of course, I'm in a similar situation to you in that we're a non-profit 
and don't have the budget for RHEL subscriptions.  So what I've done 
here is to stay on top of what the kernel issues are, and schedule 
reboots accordingly, and take those long-running analysis job machines 
and temporarily suspend general Internet accessibility until a reboot is 
possible if the kernel issue warrants that.  I likely don't have 
anywhere near as many of those jobs running as you, but I still can 
sympathize!


> Anyway, I again point out that the CentOS documentation should be made 
> clear that this functionality won't ever be coming to CentOS.

I would suggest the team, rather than a blanket statement that it's 
'never' coming to CentOS would articulate (Smooge's  posts are a great 
start!) what it would take from the community to make it happen, thus 
leaving the question open-ended.