How to disable the Livepatch client

In case the livepatch client needs to be disabled, there are several ways of approaching this.

If you have access to the system, one way is to disable the livepatch service:

$ sudo snap stop --disable canonical-livepatch

If direct access to the system is not available, livepatch client can be disabled in two ways:

  • by setting a kernel command line parameter canonical_livepatch_mode
  • by writing the mode to the /var/local/canonical_livepatch_mode file

These two locations are only checked when the livepatch daemon is started (usually at boot).

The mode value can be:

  • normal - the default operation mode, patch information is refreshed regularly and new patches are applied.
  • no-apply - patch information is refreshed, but new patches are not applied to the kernel.
  • no-refresh - patch information is not refreshed.
  • stop - the livepatch daemon will not start.
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