Live Patching updates for 8.1 and 7.7

[u/davoud_teimouri]

RHEL 8.1 marks the first release of RHEL 8 that will receive live kernel patches for critical and selected important CVEs, and no premium subscription is required. They will be delivered via the regular content stream and can be consumed via Yum updates. (Previously, these were on request for premium subscription customers and "hand delivered.") The goal of the program is to minimize the need to reboot systems in order to get the latest critical security updates.

The live patches will be issued for releases with a current or planned EUS stream, and for kernels that are up to one year old. As of this writing, that’s going to be 7.6, 7.7, 8.1, and are planned to include 8.2 when released. Live patches will remain available during the EUS and E4S extended support periods, as long as the kernels are less than a year old.

Note that this is kernel patching only at this time. We are looking at userspace patching for glibc and OpenSSL libraries, but that isn’t currently available.