Hello.
Welcome to this video demonstrating how Oracle Autonomous Linux instances work with the OS
Management service in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
The OS Management service integrates its package, security and bug updates, as well as critical
event tracking and monitoring to now also work with Autonomous Linux instances and their
automated Ksplice updates to the system.
Before working with Autonomous Linux, the OS Management service needs to be set up.
Instances require the Oracle Cloud Agent running on the instance and policies set for OS Management
in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
in addition to the policies required in the tenancy to support the OS Management service,
Autonomous Linux working with the service also requires some policies set up.
Here are the policies required for the OS Management service and for it to work with
Autonomous Linux.
Autonomous Linux requires the ALX plugin.
But the OS Management plugin will automatically start and stop the ALX plugin so the service
can work with it.
For more details on how to set up the OS Management service to work with compute instances, you
can find this free video which is also available.
Currently, only the Autonomous Linux image released from Aug 2021 has support for the
OS Management service, so earlier Autonomous Linux images cannot work with it or be migrated
to the service.
Starting at the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure console, lets first look at some of the steps
for provisioning an Autonomous Linux instance.
We click the main navigation menu, then Compute and then Instances.
In this demonstration we will only look at the Autonomous Linux information for instances,
if you want to see a detailed demonstration about creating Linux compute instance you
can find that in this video which also available.
Clicking on Create Instance launches the instance creation dialog.
I'll give the instance the name mor-alx-01.
The Autonomous Linux images are available as platform images, so you can simply select
the image from the list.
However, in this demonstration I am using a custom image, so just for this demonstration,
I will select Custom Images from the Image Source dropdown, and click on my Autonomous
Linux image and the Select Image button to use it.
The rest of the instance selections for shape, networking, SSH keys, and boot volume are
made as per normal instance creation steps, so I will quickly make these and go ahead
and click Create to start provisioning the instance.
After a few minutes the instance details shows it is running and we can scroll down and under
Resources, and click OS Management.
Only new Autonomous Linux instances created with the platform image available starting
from August 2021 are integrated with the OS Management service.
Earlier Autonomous images and instances built using them, do not work with the services
functions.
We see the OS Management information now reflects items for Autonomous Linux, such as update
schedule, Notification Topic and Event collection, as well as kernel and effective kernel information.
To ensure we are notified of any system crashes or Oops events, of automatic updates to the
kernel, or security or package updates, we must use a notification topic or create and
subscribe to a new notification topic.
For this demonstration we will create a new topic.
We click on the main menu, then Developer Services, and select Notifications.
We see there are already two other topics that have been created.
We click the Create Topic button.
This opens the Create Topic dialog.
We give the topic the name mor_notification_1, remember no spaces are allowed in the name.
We will leave the description empty, and do not need any tagging offered by the Advanced
Options, so we click Create.
We are returned to our topic list and see our new topic.
To subscribe to this topic we click Subscriptions.
We click Create Subscription to open the dialog.
From the Subscription Topic drop down, we select our topic name.
Clicking on the Protocol drop down, we choose how we wish to receive notifications for our
topic.
We will keep the default Email option.
So I give the mail address I want the notifications sent to.
Then click Create to provision the subscription.
The Subscriptions list shows the state of our new subscription as Pending.
When we created it an automated email was sent to the email address given requiring
us to confirm the subscription.
Here we see the email I received, some information has been hidden for security reasons.
I click on the Confirm Subscription link in the email and the default browser window is
opened with the response showing the OCID values for the topic and subscription and
that the subscription is confirmed.
Returning to the subscriptions list, we refresh the browser, and it changes to show it has
been confirmed and is active.
Returning to the Instance details page, we are again looking at the OS Management information
under Resources.
We can use our new topic and subscription to ensure we get notifications for any updates
or events for this Autonomous Linux instance.
We click on Edit beside Notification Topic.
In the dialog, we click the Topic Name drop down and select the name of the topic we created.
Note that we also have the option to create a new topic using this dialog, but as we already
did this, we click Save Changes.
We are returned to our instance OS Management information again, and see our notification
topic is loaded and associated now.
Currently any automated updates are being applied daily at 8:15 UTC.
To change the daily update time, we click Edit beside Autonomous Updates.
In the dialog, we can type in a new time in the Time drop down, or clicking on it also
allows us to choose a new time from the list.
We select 16:00 and click Save Changes.
Again the information for our instance refreshes and we see the time updated.
Clicking Edit beside Event Collection allows us to choose if we want diagnostic data to
be automatically uploaded when an event occurs.
It also means the cloud console is tracking events from the information received from
the instance.
Data protection regulations in certain countries may require you disable this option.
However, the crash information is still stored on the instance locally regardless of this
setting.
If we disable this then the event information is not uploaded to the cloud and event monitoring
cannot occur, which means we will not receive notifications.
We will keep it enabled and close the dialog by clicking Save Changes or Cancel.
Clicking on the three dots menu we see the links which take us to the normal OS Management
service pages.
The options are to View OS Management Details, Install Security Updates, and Install All
Updates.
Autonomous Linux instances are automatically receiving Ksplice system updates, as well
as updates for packages, security and bug fixes at a scheduled time each day. No user
interaction is needed.
These OS Management options allow you to use the service to manually run available updates
before the automatic scheduled run.
Clicking View OS Management Details, we go to the OS Management service details page
for the instance, which defaults to show the list of Available Package Updates.
We see there are a number of updates ready to be installed.
More details on working with the OS Management service through the web console can be found
in this free video.
Clicking on Events we see there are no system crash or Oops events have occurred since the
instance was started.
Clicking on Scheduled Jobs, we see there is a daily autonomous update scheduled for the
instance, and its scheduled for the new update time we configured of 16:00.
Clicking on the job name, it opens a details page listing our instance as an associated
target for the update.
Clicking on the instance name in the list, it returns us to the OS Management instance
details page again, and displays the Available Package Updates list.
This shows us the list of updates that will be applied, here its a number of security
updates with their associated CVE and a bug fix.
Clicking on Events again, we still see no events listed, so instead of waiting for an
event to happen, I will create an event on the instance.
I am not showing the event generation here as its done just for test purposes.
So after generating the event, we see the email notification received.
It informs when the event occurred and provides details of the tenancy, compartment and instance
involved, with a brief summary.
Returning to our instance details page which shows the OS Management information, we refresh
the browser window, and in the Events Summary section, beside System Errors, it shows now
one event.
We click on the event link to take us to the OS Management service events page for this
instance.
And we see the event listed, and identified as type fatal kernel error.
Clicking on the event name takes us to the event details page.
Under Report we see information about the crash event.
Including a brief summary of the stack trace.
Scrolling down to Logs we see our instance listed as having had this type of event, and
under path we see the path to the file containing the collected files associated to the event
on the instance.
Clicking on Collected Files under Resources, we see the zip file that has been collected.
We see the filename of the zip created, and under State it tells us the file was created
on the instance and uploaded to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service.
The three dots menu also provides the options to download or delete the file.
Clicking on Event Reoccurences we are shown how many times this type of event has occurred,
and on which instances.
Clicking on the Managed Instance Details in the breadcrumbs menu, we are returned to the
OS Management service page for our instance.
Under Resources we click on Scheduled Jobs.
And again see the daily update added to the list of scheduled jobs for our Autonomous
Linux instance.
And based on the update time we earlier set, we see it is scheduled to run at 16:00.
And sure enough at 16:01 we get and email notification informing us that an update was
run, and listing the packages installed.
Thats the end of the video thanks for watching.