Overview of Autonomous Linux
Oracle Autonomous Linux reduces the complexity and overhead of common operating system management tasks, including automatic daily updates and monitoring of critical events.
Features of Autonomous Linux
- Autonomous Updates
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Autonomous Linux provides automatic daily updates for Autonomous Linux instances, including zero-downtime Ksplice updates for kernel, OpenSSL, and glibc libraries. These updates are referred to as autonomous updates. When you create an Autonomous Linux instance, the service automatically creates a restricted scheduled job for autonomous updates. You can modify the execution time for the daily autonomous updates using the Console, CLI, or API.
- Critical Events
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Autonomous Linux provides instance monitoring that captures critical events to help quickly identify and debug anomalies, errors, and failures in the operating system. Some examples critical events are kernel crashes and exploit detections. You can view event information using the Console, CLI, or API.
- Event Collection
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Autonomous Linux collects information about critical events that can be used for triage, including important stack trace information and log files. You can view a summary of the report in the Console or download a zip file detailed inspection. You can control whether the Autonomous Linux service performs event collection per instance or per group.
- Notifications
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Autonomous Linux uses the Notifications service topics to send out notifications about autonomous updates and events. You can set the notification topic for Autonomous Linux instances and groups using the Console, CLI, or API.
Getting Started
Complete the following to get started with the service:
Understanding the Agent
Autonomous Linux uses an agent for managing and applying updates on an instance. The agent interacts with the OS content on an instance as directed by Autonomous Linux and reports data and results back to the service.
- Oracle Cloud Agent
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OCI instances use the Oracle Cloud Agent to interact with Autonomous Linux. Autonomous Linux doesn't have it's own agent plugin, instead it uses the OS Management Hub plugin. You enable the OS Management Hub plugin for Oracle Cloud Agent to register it with the service. See Registering an Instance..
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.The OS Management Hub plugin provides the necessary permissions to apply updates on instances:
- For Oracle Linux instances, the plugin uses the standard Linux permissions for a sudo administrative account for applying updates.
Resource Identifiers
Most types of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources have a unique, Oracle-assigned identifier called an Oracle Cloud ID (OCID). For information about the OCID format and other ways to identify your resources, see Resource Identifiers.
Retention Policy
Autonomous Linux monitors your tenancy and removes the following if older than 90 days:
- Job history
- Critical events and event data collection
Authorization and Authentication
Each service in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure integrates with IAM for authentication and authorization, for all interfaces (the Console, SDK or CLI, and REST API).
An administrator in your organization needs to set up compartments, user groups, dynamic groups, and policies in Identity and Access Management (IAM) that control which users can access which services, which resources, and the type of access. For example, the policies control who can create new users, create and manage the cloud network, create instances, create buckets, download objects, and so on. For more information, see Getting Started with Policies.
- For specific details about writing policies for Autonomous Linux, see Required IAM Policy and Autonomous Linux Policies.
- For details about writing policies for other services, see Policy Reference.
If you’re a regular user (not an administrator) who needs to use the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure resources that your company owns, contact your administrator to set up a user ID for you. The administrator can confirm which compartment or compartments you are permitted to use.
Tagging Resources
You can apply tags to your resources to help you organize them according to your business needs. You can apply tags at the time you create a resource, or you can update the resource later with the wanted tags. For general information about applying tags, see Resource Tags.
If you have permissions to create a resource, then you also have permissions to apply free-form tags to that resource. To apply a defined tag, you must have permissions to use the tag namespace. For more information about tagging, see Resource Tags. If you're not sure whether to apply tags, ask an administrator or skip this option. You can apply tags later.
Service Limits
Autonomous Linux has default service limits on the maximum number of resources allowed per region.
Autonomous Linux uses OS Management Hub resources and is subject to the OS Management Hub service limits.
Ways to Access Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
Learn the different ways you can access Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
You can access Oracle Cloud Infrastructure using the Console (a browser-based interface) or the REST API. Instructions for the Console and API are included in topics throughout this guide. For a list of available SDKs, see Software Development Kits and Command Line Interface.
To access the Console, you must use a supported browser. To go to the Console sign-in page, open the navigation menu at the top of this page and click Infrastructure Console. You are prompted to enter your cloud tenant, your username, and your password.
For general information about using the API, see REST APIs.