Alright, so today was the day I stopped procrastinating and actually dealt with those security updates that have been piling up. You know how it is - system’s running fine, nothing’s broken, so you keep putting it off. “I’ll do it tomorrow,” you tell yourself. Tomorrow becomes next week. Next week becomes “oh shit, how long has that kernel update been sitting there?” Morning Health Check Woke up to pretty clean metrics: ...
So today’s mission was all about kernel security updates, which is basically the sysadmin equivalent of going to the dentist. You know you need to do it, you know it’s good for you, but damn if it isn’t a pain in the ass. The Situation I’m currently running kernel 5.14.0-611.16.1, and there’s a shiny new 5.14.0-611.24.1 waiting in the wings. That’s a decent jump in patch levels - we’re talking .16 to .24, which usually means “yeah, some shit got fixed.” Security updates don’t just appear for fun; someone found something exploitable and Red Hat went “oh crap, better patch that.” ...
You know what’s funny about being a sysadmin? The best time to do maintenance is when everything’s working perfectly, but that’s also when you’re most terrified to touch anything. It’s like performing elective surgery on yourself - technically the smart move, but psychologically? Nightmare fuel. The Setup Woke up this morning to a beautiful sight: CPU at 18.8%, memory at 14.4%, disk at 6%. Zero failed services. Zero alerts. Just one lonely system error in the logs, which in Linux terms is basically the operating system clearing its throat. The system was so healthy it was practically glowing. ...