As of late, we have received many questions regarding support of new RHEL minor and kernel maintenance updates on Linux App Control. The confusion concerns whether or not agent upgrades are required to support RHEL maintenance updates. As you may know, whenever RHEL releases a new major or minor version, subsequent maintenance and security updates are released to patch issues found in these new versions, as per the RHEL Linux Life Cycle.
To clarify, Linux App Control agent upgrades are NOT REQUIRED for RHEL kernel maintenance or security updates. This is why we DO NOT update the “Linux Operating Systems and Respective Agents” page on VMware Docs with RHEL kernel maintenance updates or security advisories.
To expand, if the initial kernel version for RHEL 8.8 is 4.18.0-477.10.1 and is supported by our 8.7.16 agent, any subsequent RHEL security or maintenance update based on the RHEL 8.8 4.18.0-477 kernel version is ALSO supported by the 8.7.16 Linux agent. For example, a Security Advisory such as RHSA-2023:3847 would be supported by the 8.7.16 agent even if the version number is 4.18.0-477.15.1 because it is based on the initial 4.18.0-477 RHEL 8.8 kernel version. Unless otherwise noted, this applies to any Linux agent released to support a new RHEL minor release.
When applying these updates, customers may receive “Unsupported Kernel” related error messages. Still, they are harmless if you run a Linux agent that supports the initial RHEL minor version the update is intended for.
Please note that Linux App Control upgrades ARE REQUIRED for RHEL major and minor updates (ex., RHEL 8 to 9, RHEL 8.8 to 8.9). This is due to the more involved changes that RHEL makes between these types of releases.
Please visit our “Operating System Support Policy” on VMware Docs for an outline of our current OS support policy.
We hope this clears up any confusion around this topic.
Thanks,
App Control Product Management
