Monday, December 21, 2015

Tahrpup 6.0 CE in my old Acer Aspire 5315

I have recently installed Tahrpup 6.0 CE in my old Acer Aspire 5315. It has some heating issues. It used to power off after 20 mins in my first login. After subsequent reboot, it is stable, even it gets overheating also. I recommend this Puppy Linux for old desktops, which has very small in configuration. It is built with Ubuntu 14.04 packages compatibility.
I wrote this post in the same os with the newly installed Google Chrome32. :)

Prons
1. Light weight and easy to use.

Cons
1. Laptop overheating problem, especially for Acer Aspire 5315 model.

Friday, December 18, 2015

Ubuntu 15.10 Features

Major 5 features:
1. New Overlay Scrollbars
2. Overlay Scrollbars in Ubuntu 15.10
3. Overlay Scrollbars in Ubuntu 15.10
4. Ubuntu 15.10 features new scrollbars.

Canonical has dropped its own Unity Overlay Scrollbars, which were thin, hidden, and had hard-to-hit pop-out handles, and replaced them with upstream GNOME’s take.

GNOME overlay scrollbars are auto-expand when mouse over so as to save space in applications and have a large ‘grab’ area to make them easier to move.

Unity 7.3.3
‘Unity has received some small fixes and usability improvements’
Unity, the default desktop shell, has been handed a batch of small fixes and usability improvements for Ubuntu 15.10.

For example, you can now drag and drop apps from the Unity Dash to the desktop to create shortcuts, and navigate through Dash results using keyboard navigation keys.

The Unity Dash search box text and BFB tooltip no longer make mention of ‘online sources’ when you have online source searching set to ‘disabled’ under System Settings > Privacy.

Other changes in Unity 7.3.3:

You can now drag and drop apps from the Dash to the desktop to create shortcuts
Page up/down keyboard navigation works as scroll in the Dash
Dash title & BFB tooltip is updated based on your privacy settings
Session exit buttons now have a click effect
Fix to prevent ‘shutdown’ of computer when screen is locked
Active app icons now show unfolded when launcher accordion triggered
Fix for full screen menubar
Fixes issues with ‘show desktop’ that caused window decoration for two windows of same app to vanish
Dash: Non-expandable category headers skipped in keyboard navigation
Dash: Non-expandable category headers are no longer highlighted on mouse over
Dash: screenreader and KeyNav fixes
New setting to control the show-now delay (when pressing Alt key)
Logic tweak to stop adjacent menu opening when moving from an indicator icon to its menu

Linux Kernel 4.2

The Ubuntu 15.10 kernel version is 4.2, released at the end of August.

This brings better hardware support, including initial support for Intel’s 64-bit “Broxton” Atom chips. There’s also new AMD GPU driver supporting recent Radeon GPUs, and F2FS file-system encryption support.

Ubuntu Make
Ubuntu Make, a command-line utility that makes installing popular developer tools easier on Ubuntu, now supports even more platforms, frameworks and services, including a full Android development environment.

Persistent Network Interface Names
Ubuntu 15.10 introduces stateless persistent network interface names — a technical feature that, for most of us, has little bearing on how Ubuntu runs.

In short it allows interface names for networking hardware to be maintained between reboots, kernel updates, driver changes or hardware being unplugged or removed.

Updated Apps
Application updates (naturally) feature.

Firefox 41
Chromium 45
LibreOffice 5.0.2
Nautilus (aka ‘Files’) 3.14.2
Totem (aka ‘Videos’) 3.16
Rhythmbox 3.2.1
GNOME Terminal 3.16
Eye of GNOME 3.16
Empathy 3.12.10
Shotwell 0.22

Monday, December 14, 2015

What is DNF?

Naming

DNF stands for Dandified yum. Since DNF is a tech preview in Fedora 18 the Python module names can not be 'yum.*' as that would clash with yum itself.
Why not zif/zypp?

People are asking why we didn't choose to adopt zif (or SUSE's zypp) instead of fixing yum. The reasons are:

    dnf looks for a middle ground between a sane API and some backwards compatibility.
    dnf and hawkey are first steps toward using the same resolver across the entire stack.
    Libsolv is a well tested and proven code base, currently the most sophisticated and optimized dependency solving implementation.

Benefit to Fedora

Hawkey clients will get:

    easier bindings to other languages than Python
    concise, clear package management API
    better performance (through utilizing libsolv)

The set of possible hawkey API consumers:

    dnf (the next generation yum)
    release engineering tools
    PackageKit
    graphical package management tools
    Anaconda

DNF clients and users will get:

    Faster and simpler package manager.
    Simplified client code.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

VScode is open source now

Visual Studio code (VScode) is the cross-platform Chromium-based code editor is being open sourced today by Microsoft. You can install in Linux also.

Monday, November 16, 2015

Simple shell script to find out MAC address in Linux

Find the following commands for the stuff
#cat /sys/class/net/*/address
For particular interface like for eth0
#cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Installing only security updates in Ubuntu

Use the command unattended-upgrade possibly with the following syntax

#sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades

Refer this up as well. /usr/share/doc/unattended-upgrades/README.md
Courtesy: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticSecurityUpdates

Monday, July 20, 2015

Terminal fix - desirable output

Use if clear does not work or the terminal does not show the output in the screen in a clear manner use this following command to fix this.

TERM=vt100; export $TERM

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

NTP leap second fix - Red Hat stuff

Resolve Leap Second Issues in Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Leap seconds are a periodic one-second adjustment of Coordinated Universal Time(UTC) in order to keep a system's time of day close to the mean solar time. However, the Earth's rotation speed varies in response to climatic and geological events, and due to this, UTC leap seconds are irregularly spaced and unpredictable. This article seeks to provide information regarding the leap seconds themselves, along with addressing how Red Hat Enterprise Linux handles the insertion of one.

The next leap second insertion is scheduled for June 30th, 2015 at 23:59:60 UTC.

Systems running any version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux should automatically account for leap second corrections if they are using the NTP (Network Time Protocol) daemon to synchronize their local timekeeping with an NTP server. During the last day before a leap second correction, NTP servers should notify their clients that a leap second will occur, and at 23:59:59 UTC, the Linux kernel should add or remove an extra second by making the 60th second occur twice or removing it entirely.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Delete the file and checking the error status - shellscript

This script uses command line arguments ($1 and  $?) and tail out the /root/error.txt file.

#!/bin/bash
#usage of command line arguments
rm $1 2>>/root/error.txt
if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo " Success "
else
tail -1 /root/error.txt
fi

Sleep command - an example shell script

The following script clear screen and update the date every second. So it seems like the running digital clock.

#!/bin/bash
#running digital clock
while [ : ]
do
clear
date
sleep 1
done

Saturday, May 23, 2015

Simple one line script for checking the file existence.


A single line script / command to find the particular file exists or not.
# test -f a.txt && echo "File exists" || echo "File does not exist"

Simple shell script to find out the file exists or not

Script
#!/bin/bash
#name: filecheck.sh
#simple script to find out the file exists or not
if [ -f $1 ]
then
echo " $1 exists "
else
echo " $1 does not exist"
fi
Script usage: ./filecheck filename

Ubuntu 15.04 general features

Well, here we are. After six busy months, one beta and a bunch of minor changes, the final stable release of Ubuntu 15.04 is now ready for you to download.

The bug fixes, improvements in usability and a fresh serving of software updates add up to a somewhat substantive total, creating a release that feels more polished than ever.

Enough chatter. Let’s dive in and see what’s new in Ubuntu 15.04.

Ubuntu 15.04 – New Features

Systemd
‘You may notice a change in boot speed [because of Systemd]…’
The headline change in Ubuntu 15.04 is the introduction of the Systemd init system at boot-time.

This is the software that initializes (hence the name ‘init’) first when booting, and handles loading of the various modules and background processes that make much of a modern computer operating system do what it needs to.

Ubuntu previously used Upstart, its own custom-made Init system, at boot time. When Debian, the Linux distribution that Ubuntu is built upon, chose to adopt Systemd Ubuntu understandably fell in line.

Upstart is available in 15.04. It’s included as a fallback in GRUB and is used for controlling user sessions.

The merits (or lack thereof) of the switch are largely moot for the less technically minded. It is possible that some users will notice a slight change in boot speed depending on their configuration.

Unity 7.3
Locally Integrated Menus Are Now Default
Menus can now be set to ‘always show’
The Unity desktop environment used by default in Ubuntu 15.04 receives a handful of small refinements, most of which aim to either fix bugs or correct missteps in earlier versions.

For example, application menus can now be set to ‘Always Show’.

Yeah; you no longer have to push your mouse to the top of the screen to show the ‘File’, ‘Edit’, ‘Help’, etc menus — not if you don’t want to.

If you prefer having your applications menus available inside application windows use the toggle in System Settings > Appearance > Behaviour to set things up how you like.

These “locally integrated menus”, introduced in 14.10, also support the ‘Always Show’ feature and showing up on mouseover of unfocused windows.

Other improvements to Unity in Vivid Vervet include a fix for showing the overlay elements (HUD, Dash, etc) over fullscreen windows and small adjustments to the speed of login and logout animations.

Compiz 0.9.12
Powering the Unity desktop experience is Compiz, the tried-and-trusted window manager. In keeping with the rest of this release the changes it gets are modest and made up of bug fixes and compatibility with alternative desktop environments.

Ubuntu Linux Kernel 3.19
While not based on the latest version of the Linux Kernel Ubuntu 15.04 ships with a modified version of 3.19.3 one. Expect a few updates to the most recent 3.19.x patch releases shortly after release.

Application Updates
music-rhythmbox
New and updated apps feature, including Rhythmbox
You’ll also find updated versions many of Ubuntu’s default apps, including the latest Firefox web-browser and Thunderbird e-mail client, a new version of the Rhythmbox music player plus an entirely revamped Totem video player.

LibreOffice 4.4
Firefox 37
Thunderbird 31.6
Shotwell 0.20.2
Nautilus 3.14.2
Evince 3.14.2
Rhythmbox 3.1
Totem 3.14.1
GNOME Terminal 3.14
New Default Wallpaper
suru desktop wallpaper ubuntu vivid

The new Ubuntu 15.04 Wallpaper
Ubuntu’s default wallpaper choice is irrelevant to some, integral to others. Whatever side of the fence you sit on the new wallpaper is palatable enough. After all: first impressions count.

Expect to see this new design flash up in various ‘Ubuntu in the wild’ posts over the next six months!

Ubuntu Make
Having been formally introduced in last October’s release the ‘Ubuntu Developer Tools Center’ has undergone a number of changes for Vivid, including being renamed as the more memorable ‘Ubuntu Make’.

Ubuntu Make simplifies the process of installing a host of developer-focused tools, editors, libraries and software development kits including the Android SDK, IDEA, PyCharm, and the new Firefox Developer Edition.


Improvements to the way library managers behave now allows multiple system libraries to be run/used without conflict.

Linux interview questions - UCF3.2 special

  1. SSH connection refused –start the sshd service in client side
  2. Fsck usage
Q. Can I run fsck or e2fsck command when Linux file system is mounted? Do you advice to run fsck on a live file system? I am using Cent OS.
A. No. Do not run fsck on a live or mounted file system. fsck is used to check and optionally repair one or more Linux file systems. Running fsck on a mounted filesystem can usually result in disk / data corruption. So please do not do it. You have two choices
(a) Take down system to single user mode and unmout system
  1. Xfs port number 7100
  2. iptables –F flushing iptable rules
  3. Sendmail configuration file /etc/mail/sendmail.cf,
# m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
  1. No of hosts in class b
Address Class
Total # Of Bits For Network ID / Host ID
First Octet of IP Address
# Of Network ID Bits Used To Identify Class
Usable # Of Network ID Bits
Number of Possible Network IDs
# Of Host IDs Per Network ID
Class A
8 / 24
0xxx xxxx
1
8-1 = 7
27-2 = 126
224-2 = 16,277,214
Class B
16 / 16
10xx xxxx
2
16-2 = 14
214 = 16,384
216-2 = 65,534
Class C
24 / 8
110x xxxx
3
24-3 = 21
221 = 2,097,152
28-2 = 254


  1. What is the default permission for printer spooler service?
620 – read write – write- no perminssion
  1. File string delete – sed command
  2. What is the advantage of N+1 and one to one cluster?
The advantages of the N + 1 model are that the server load can be distributed to multiple nodes and that only one backup node is necessary to sustain all the possible node failures. Thus, the machine idle ratio is 1/N as opposed to 1/1, as is the case in a single asymmetric model.


Table 3-1  High Availability Model Advantages and Disadvantages
Model
Advantages
Disadvantages
Recommended User
Asymmetric
  • Simple Configuration
  • Backup node is 100 percent reserved
  • Machine resources are not fully utilized
A small service provider with plans to expand in the future.
Symmetric
  • Better use of system resources
  • Higher availability
  • Resource contention on backup node
  • Mirrored disks reduce disk write performance
A medium-sized service provider with no expansion plans on their backup systems in the near future.
N + 1
  • Load distribution
  • Easy expansion
  • Configuration complexity
A large service provider who requires distribution with no resource constraints.


  1. Block level for NAS (Network Attached SCSI) NAS is file level, SAN & DAS are block level
  2. Which cluster has the critical application? Application cluster
  3. What is the security protocol in SAN? LUN masking, zoning - In a storage area network (SAN), zoning is the allocation of resources for device load balancing and for selectively allowing access to data only to certain users.
  4. ls *.txt
  5. iostat which field the processing of time waiting ? 4 th field %iowait
  6. rpm to deb what is the package? alien rpm
  7. How to find send/receive of eth0 statistics? ethtool -S eth0, netstat -e
  8. What is not a routable protocol? Bootp, tcp, arp, rarp
  9. CD drive protocol – ATAPI (ATA Packet Interface)
  10. What is the single point of failure in cluster network?
A single point of failure (SPOF) is a part of a system that, if it fails, will stop the entire system from working.[1] They are undesirable in any system with a goal of high availability or reliability, be it a business practice, software application, or other industrial system.
Systems can be made robust by adding redundancy in all potential SPOFs. For instance, the owner of a small tree care company may only own one wood chipper. If the chipper breaks, he may be unable to complete his current job and may have to cancel future jobs until he can obtain a replacement.
Redundancy can be achieved at various levels. For instance, the owner of the tree care company may have spare parts ready for the repair of the wood chipper, in case it fails. At a higher level, he may have a second wood chipper that he can bring to the job site. Finally, at the highest level, he may have enough equipment available to completely replace everything at the work site in the case of multiple failures.
The assessment of a potential SPOF involves identifying the critical components of a complex system that would provoke a total systems failure in case of malfunction. Highly reliable systems should not rely on any such individual component.


  1. File which is accessible by any process? lsof,top,ps,all the above
  2. echo ENV_VAR what is the output? Same output
  3. iostat –x What is the output? Disk utilization in linux
  4. need to forward mails
.forward
  1. send mail alias file? /etc/aliasis
  2. What is the maxpv size in LVM? 2TB PE size 4MB
  3. Where we install platform in the cloud?Infrastructure or platform
  4. NTP expansion – Network Time Protocol (123-port no)
  5. Advantages of LVM2 (read & write and snapshot)
  6. Partition type of lvm – partition id 08e
  7. Authorize server usage in DNS – Master/ slave a &b
  8. Not included in DNS = restricted zero/ standard primary
  9. Not benefits in clouding = regulatory
  10. 3rd party / partners in for incident report
  11. Password reset is incident management true
  12. Commands to display vgs – vgs, vgdisplay
  13. How to run bourne again scripts ./scriptname.sh
  14. 2 types of zoning in storage – hard zone and soft zone
  15. Command to list route – route –n, netstat –r
  16. Merits of resizefs over ext2 – revision control
  17. One public network down what to do? Remedy
Additional questions:1) How to reduce the lvm, or How to reduce vg? lvreduce -L -200G /dev/vg0/lv0
2) What is the layer nfs supported? Application layer
3) What is the configuration file for squid? /etc/squid/squid.conf
4)Which class multicast is supported class D
5)What is the port no for NIS and NFS ? NFS 2049 NIS
6) How to exit the crontab with saving the command?esc:wq
7) crontab entries – min hours date month day command
8) DNS config file /var/named/chroot/etc
9) What is the use of DAS? Direct-attached storage (DAS) is computer storage that is directly attached to one computer or server and is not, without special support, directly accessible to other ones.
10) How to check the socket details? lscpu | grep 'socket' dmidecode


Other questions:

    1. How to disallow the query from DNS? RFC 1035 transaction signature
    2. How to delete package using dpkg? dpkg –r package name
    3. What is the reconfiguration file in RHEL? sys-unconfig
    4. Block size 8192 mount thru NFS? mount moonshot:/home /home -o rsize=8192,wsize=8192
    5. What is lsof option for subdirectories? lsof +D /directory
    6. xinetd or inetd file for RHEL
    7. default protocol for traceroute ICMP
    8. iostat –d? Only device statistics will be displayed.
    9. How to check sockets thru netstat? netstat -an or lsof -i.
    10. How to check non-listening sockets thru netstat? netstat -al
    11. Highly availability cluster in patching and upgrading?
    12. What is a valid FC topology? Switched fabric
    13. Protocol for TCP/IP? internet
    14. Service desk – for problem analysis and solution providing – False



  1. HBA expansion – Host Bus Adapter
  2. How to check the hops? Traceroute
  3. Incident management and problem management example.
  4. Lvmmaxpvsize=0 what does it mean?
  5. Hybrid cloud concept? A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally.
  6. OSI & TCP how many layers? 7 & 4 layers respectively
  7. To insert above and below one line in the vi editor esc O/o (capital – above, small – below)
  8. To replace the character? r
  9. Priority – nice value -20 to 19 (lower number has higher priority, 0 is default priority)
  10. What are the ways to change the hostname in RHEL? hostname =hostname, /etc/sysconfig/hostname
  11. How to connect external DAS? The main protocols used for DAS connections are ATA, SATA, eSATA,[1] SCSI, SAS, and Fibre Channel.
  12. What are the things to be mentioned in iSCSI
  13. How to avoid bounced mail in sendmail?
  14. How to avoid mail queue in sendmail?
  15. How to extend lv in linux 2.6 kernel in lvm2 from 12 to 13 gb? lvextend –L +1G /dev/vg0/lv0
  16. 4Gb – 4096Mb
  17. HA cluster, I/O fencing two nodes failed? Fail-over - the operation of moving the service from one cluster node to another.
  18. How to avoid split brain? A good way of avoiding split brain conditions in most cases without having to resort to fencing is to configure redundant and independent cluster communications paths - so that loss of a single interface or path does not break communication between the nodes - that is the communications should not have a single point of failure (SPOF).
  19. VLAN advantage in SCSI?


  1. Split
split -b 22 newfile.txt new
Split the file newfile.txt into three separate files called newaa, newab and newac..., with each file containing 22 bytes of data.
split -l 300 file.txt new
Split the file newfile.txt into files beginning with the name new, each containing 300 lines of text.


  1. How to find the hard link of a particular file
— Test: -samefile NAME
File is a hard link to the same inode as NAME. If the ‘-L’ option is in effect, symbolic links to the same file as NAME points to are also matched.


— Test: -inum n
File has inode number n. The ‘+’ and ‘-’ qualifiers also work, though these are rarely useful. Much of the time it is easier to use ‘-samefile’ rather than this option.


  1. Apache directive
Apache directives are a set of rules which define how your server should run, number of clients that can access your server, etc. you can change them by editing the httpd.conf and related files to meet your requirements
  1. How to delete a character in vi editor – press x to delete
  2. Grep pattern – filtering a text from the file in general
  3. How to disconnect the users
skill -STOP -u vivek stop the user
skill -CONT -u vivek resume the halted user
  1. How to set numbers in vim esc: se nu
  2. Broadcast ip address – last address of the class
  3. How to add nfs wherever needed – nfs soft mount to be used
  4. Packages/modules for ldap – open ldap
  5. Mac address how many bit – 48 bits
  6. What is UTC – Universal co-ordinate time
  7. Vmstat syntax - vmstat [options] [delay [count]]
  8. iostat once 5 times - iostat 5
  9. Routing table – route –n, netstat –rn, ip route list
  10. Features of NAS
NAS operates at file system level -- usually either NFS or CIFS -- and serves whole files to users over the shared medium of the local-area network (LAN), while storage-area networks (SANs) deliver data at the block level (via Fibre Channel or iSCSI protocols) and are well suited to transactional storage such as database access.
  1. Iscsi protocol? – internet protocol, SAN protocol

How to: Compile Linux kernel 2.6

Step # 1 Get Latest Linux kernel code

Visit http://kernel.org/ and download the latest source code. File name would be linux-x.y.z.tar.bz2, where x.y.z is actual version number. For example file inux-2.6.25.tar.bz2 represents 2.6.25 kernel version. Use wget command to download kernel source code:
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/linux-x.y.z.tar.bz2

Note: Replace x.y.z with actual version number.

Step # 2 Extract tar (.tar.bz3) file

Type the following command:
# tar -xjvf linux-2.6.25.tar.bz2 -C /usr/src
# cd /usr/src

Step # 3 Configure kernel

Before you configure kernel make sure you have development tools (gcc compilers and related tools) are installed on your system. If gcc compiler and tools are not installed then use apt-get command under Debian Linux to install development tools.
# apt-get install gcc

Now you can start kernel configuration by typing any one of the command:

$ make menuconfig - Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs. This option also useful on remote server if you wanna compile kernel remotely.
$ make xconfig - X windows (Qt) based configuration tool, works best under KDE desktop
$ make gconfig - X windows (Gtk) based configuration tool, works best under Gnome Dekstop.
For example make menuconfig command launches following screen:
$ make menuconfig

You have to select different options as per your need. Each configuration option has HELP button associated with it so select help button to get help.

Step # 4 Compile kernel

Start compiling to create a compressed kernel image, enter:
$ make
Start compiling to kernel modules:
$ make modules

Install kernel modules (become a root user, use su command):
$ su -
# make modules_install

Step # 5 Install kernel

So far we have compiled kernel and installed kernel modules. It is time to install kernel itself.
# make install

It will install three files into /boot directory as well as modification to your kernel grub configuration file:

System.map-2.6.25
config-2.6.25
vmlinuz-2.6.25
Step # 6: Create an initrd image

Type the following command at a shell prompt:
# cd /boot
# mkinitrd -o initrd.img-2.6.25 2.6.25

initrd images contains device driver which needed to load rest of the operating system later on. Not all computer requires initrd, but it is safe to create one.

Step # 7 Modify Grub configuration file - /boot/grub/menu.lst

Open file using vi:
# vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.25 Default
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hdb1 ro
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.25
savedefault
boot
Remember to setup correct root=/dev/hdXX device. Save and close the file. If you think editing and writing all lines by hand is too much for you, try out update-grub command to update the lines for each kernel in /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Just type the command:
# update-grub
Neat. Huh?

Step # 8 : Reboot computer and boot into your new kernel

Just issue reboot command:

# reboot

Ksplice: Upgrade / Patch Your Linux Kernel Without Reboots

How Do I Install Ksplice?

First, you need to register with Ksplice. Type the following command to install rpm repo under RHEL 5:
# rpm -ivh https://www.ksplice.com/yum/uptrack/centos/ksplice-uptrack-release.noarch.rpm
To install Ksplice, enter:
# yum install uptrack
Edit /etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf, enter:
# vi /etc/uptrack/uptrack.conf
Update it as follows (input your access key):

[Auth]
accesskey = ADD-YOUR-ACCESS-KEY-HERE
[Network]
# Proxy to use when accessing the Uptrack server, of the form
# [protocol://][:port]
# The proxy must support making HTTPS connections. If this is unset,
# Uptrack will look for the https_proxy, HTTPS_PROXY, and http_proxy
# environment variables in that order, and then finally look for a
# proxy setting in the system-wide GConf database, if available.
https_proxy =
[Settings]
# Automatically install updates at boot time. If this is set, on
# reboot into the same kernel, Uptrack will re-install the same set of
# updates that were present before the reboot.
install_on_reboot = yes
# Options configuring the Uptrack cron job.
#
# GUI users will get all notices via the GUI and likely want to set
# the following cron options to "no".
# Cron job will install updates automatically
autoinstall = no
# Cron job will print a message when new updates are installed.
# This option is only relevant if autoinstall = yes
cron_output_install = no
# Cron job will print a message when new updates are available
cron_output_available = no
# Cron job will print a message when it encounters errors
cron_output_error = no
Save and close the file.

How Do I Apply Rebootless Kernel Updates?

You need to first download and apply updates via RHN:
# yum -y update
OR
# yum update kernel kernel-headers kernel-devel
Don't reboot the box, simply type the following command to apply hotfix:
# uptrack-upgrade
To see a list of updates that are currently installed, enter:
# uptrack-show -y

Sample Email Notification

You will get an email as follows when updates are available:

Fig.01: Ksplice Update Notification
Fig.01: Ksplice Update Notification


The web interface also provides information about your server and installed kernel updates:
Fig.02: Uptrack Web Interface
Fig.02: Uptrack Web Interface

Conclusion

The pricing is as follows:

Monthly price per system First 20 servers : $3.95
Beyond 20 servers: $2.95
Currently it is free for all Ubuntu users.
Ksplice is a pretty good and stable software. This is useful for Linux admin or business who can not accept downtime for patching. A few business comes in my mind:

Small shop, say 8-12 Linux based servers.
Pro-blogging or webmaster servers (a typical setup included one web server and one db server). Avoiding downtime means more ad revenue for webmasters.
Hosting companies - again avoiding downtime means good customer satisfactions and less work for sys admins. If you run VM based hosting (OpenVZ or XEN based vps) you can avoid downtime too.
Small cluster of Linux system, say 6 system - If cluster is using 80% of capacity and if one of node rebooted for kernel upgrade, load will up for rest of 5 systems. In such case, this service can help to keep load under control without rebooting the box. However, this is NOT very useful for very large Linux based cluster redundant load-balanced servers, routers, switches, firewalls etc. Since your cluster is so large that 4-5 servers failing makes no difference to the remaining nodes. In some cases it is possible to do geo load balancing too.
But I've HA Failover Solution In Place...

100% uptime depends upon lots of factors and and HA solution handles hardware or other failures very well. However, Ksplice service is not all about 100% uptime, it is about not rebooting your server for a Linux kernel upgrade. You can easily combine Ksplice with HA solution (such as keepalived+nginx reverse proxy) and try to get perfect five 9s. I highly recommend this service for small to medium size business or professional webmasters.