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Getting Started with Autonomous Linux

Get started with Autonomous Linux by ensuring service prerequisites are met before registering instances.

Complete the following to get started with the service:

Prerequisites

Before using Autonomous Linux, ensure you complete the following prerequisites.

The Autonomous Linux service depends on the OS Management Hub service to apply autonomous updates to Autonomous Linux instances.

Supported Environments

Autonomous Linux is an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service which can manage OCI instances. Verify that the OS version of an instance is supported in the environment you want to manage.

Note

Autonomous Linux isn't available on the Oracle Cloud Free Tier instances. If you're using Oracle Cloud Application tenancies, you might not have the required OCI access. Contact your sales representative. Learn more about Oracle's cloud services.

Supported OS Versions

  • Oracle Autonomous Linux 7
  • Oracle Autonomous Linux 8
  • Oracle Autonomous Linux 9
Important

Autonomous Linux requires minimum Oracle Cloud Agent version 1.40. For instances using platform images released before April 2024, upgrade the Oracle Cloud Agent to 1.40 or later.

Required IAM Policy

Add the following policies to allow the use of notifications in Autonomous Linux.

To allow the Autonomous Linux service to publish notifications:

Allow any-user to use ons-topics in tenancy where request.principal.type='alx-notification'
Tenancy-level policies

To allow the user to create and use notification topics:

allow group <user_group> to manage ons-topics in tenancy
Compartment-level policies (if not using tenancy-level)

If the tenancy administrator doesn't permit setting IAM policies at the tenancy level, you can restrict the use of Autonomous Linux resources to a compartment and its subcompartments (policies use compartment inheritance).

To allow the user to create and use notification topics in a compartment inside the tenancy:

allow group <user_group> to manage ons-topics in compartment <compartment_name>

Compartment Considerations

Use compartments to organize and isolate Autonomous Linux resources. Follow best practices when allocating resources to particular compartments.

The following resources have compartment restrictions:

  • Profiles: Service-provided profiles and default profiles always reside in the root compartment. All other profiles can reside in any compartment. See Understanding Profiles.

Best Practices for Compartments

See Learn Best Practices for Setting Up Your Tenancy for general OCI compartment best practices.

For Autonomous Linux best practices, when creating groups, limit instance members to the same compartment as the group. Autonomous Linux displays instance members, jobs, and reports for a single compartment at a time. When all instance members are in the same compartment, you have a direct view of all members, jobs, and reports associated with the group.

If instance members are in several compartments, your view of instances, jobs, and reports is limited to the selected compartment. You must change the compartment scope when viewing members, examining job logs, and running reports. For example, when looking at a job for a multi-compartment group, you would need to change compartments to view all the associated children jobs. Additionally, depending on your policies, a user might not have permissions to all the compartments for the instance members. These users will have an incomplete view of the group.

Moving Resources Between Compartments

You can move most resources between compartments within the same region of your tenancy. However, any scheduled jobs associated with the resource don't move to the destination compartment. They continue to reside in the source compartment. For example, if you move a group, any scheduled jobs associated with the group remain in the old compartment.

Before moving resources, verify that policies and permissions are correctly set so that you don't accidentally lose access to the resource.

To move resources, see:

For general information about moving resources between compartments in OCI, see Moving Resources Between Compartments. To move OCI instances, see Moving Compute Resources to a Different Compartment.

Software Source Considerations

Software sources are software repositories which provide packages and module streams to instances registered with Autonomous Linux.

Use OS Management Hub to add, create, or modify software sources. Software sources available in OS Management Hub are available to instances in the Autonomous Linux service. See Managing Software Sources in OS Management Hub.

Mandatory Software Sources

Autonomous Linux instances have a minimum set of required software sources automatically attached to them when they register with the service. When you register your first Autonomous Linux instance, these required software sources are automatically added to OS Management Hub if they aren't already available. You can't detach these required software sources from the instance, but can attach or detach other software sources.

Minimum required software sources:

Oracle Autonomous Linux 7
Name Description
ol7_addons-x86_64 Oracle Linux 7 Addons (x86_64)
ol7_ksplice-x86_64 Ksplice for Oracle Linux 7 (x86_64)
ol7_ksplice_els-x86_64 Ksplice for Oracle Linux 7 ELS (x86_64)
ol7_latest-x86_64 Oracle Linux 7 Server Latest (x86_64)
ol7_latest_els-x86_64 Oracle Linux 7 Server Latest ELS (x86_64)
ol7_oci_included-x86_64 Oracle Software for OCI users on Oracle Linux 7 (x86_64)
ol7_optional_latest-x86_64 Oracle Linux 7 Server Optional Latest (x86_64)
ol7_software_collections-x86_64 Software Collection Library release 3.0 packages for Oracle Linux 7 (x86_64)
ol7_uekr6-x86_64 Latest Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 6 for Oracle Linux 7 Server (x86_64)
ol7_uekr6_els-x86_64 Latest Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 6 for Oracle Linux 7 Server ELS (x86_64)
ol7_x86_64_userspace_ksplice-x86_64 Ksplice aware userspace packages for Oracle Linux 7 Server (x86_64)
ol7_x86_64_userspace_ksplice_els-x86_64 Ksplice aware userspace packages for Oracle Linux 7 Server ELS (x86_64)
Oracle Autonomous Linux 8
Name Description
ol8_addons-x86_64 Oracle Linux 8 Addons (x86_64)
ol8_appstream-x86_64 Oracle Linux 8 Application Stream (x86_64)
ol8_baseos_latest-x86_64 Oracle Linux 8 BaseOS Latest (x86_64)
ol8_ksplice-x86_64 Ksplice for Oracle Linux 8 (x86_64)
ol8_oci_included-x86_64 Oracle Software for OCI users on Oracle Linux 8 (x86_64)
ol8_uekr7-x86_64 Oracle Linux 8 UEK Release 7 (x86_64)
ol8_x86_64_userspace_ksplice-x86_64 Ksplice aware userspace packages for Oracle Linux 8 (x86_64)
Oracle Autonomous Linux 9
Name Description
ol9_addons-x86_64 Oracle Linux 9 Addons (x86_64)
ol9_appstream-x86_64 Oracle Linux 9 Application Stream (x86_64)
ol9_baseos_latest-x86_64 Oracle Linux 9 BaseOS Latest (x86_64)
ol9_ksplice-x86_64 Ksplice for Oracle Linux 9 (x86_64)
ol9_oci_included-x86_64 Oracle Software for OCI users on Oracle Linux 9 (x86_64)
ol9_uekr7-x86_64 Oracle Linux 9 UEK Release 7 (x86_64)
ol9_x86_64_userspace_ksplice-x86_64 Ksplice aware userspace packages for Oracle Linux 9 (x86_64)

What's Next

  1. (Optional) Create a profile to register an instance with the content associated with specific software sources or a group.
  2. Register an instance with the Autonomous Linux service.

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