Secure your Open-Source Freedom for 10 years
Hugo Huang
on 16 November 2021
Tags: Apps , Extended Security Maintenance , Google Cloud , Security
This article was last updated 1 year ago.
If this is your desire, it is Ubuntu Pro’s commitment: “Ubuntu Pro will secure your Open-Source Freedom for 10 years”. Security and Freedom shouldn’t be a debate, a trade-off, even a dilemma. Security shouldn’t be your concern when you embrace Open-Source.
A 10-year commitment
Canonical backs Ubuntu Pro for 10 years, ensuring security updates are available throughout, with a guaranteed upgrade path. For example, Ubuntu 16.04 Pro will continue to get security updates until 2026.
Ubuntu Pro automatically entitles Extended Security Maintenance (ESM). Let’s SSH into your Ubuntu Pro virtual machine. If you haven’t yet upgrade your Ubuntu LTS to Ubuntu Pro, please follow this tutorial. In less than One Minute, you will be able to get your Ubuntu Pro machine without losing any of your mission critical workloads. Once you SSH into your Ubuntu Pro, input:
| ua status |
You will see:
| SERVICE | ENTITLED | STATUS | DESCRIPTION |
|---|---|---|---|
| cis | yes | enabled | Center for Internet Security Audit Tools |
| esm-apps | yes | enabled | UA Apps: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) |
| esm-infra | yes | enabled | UA Infra: Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) |
Wait a second, why are there two “ESM”?
Open Source Security
ESM-infra guarantees 10-year Extended Security Maintenance (ESM) for packages in the Main repository, which includes Canonical-supported free and open-source software. On the other hand, ESM-apps further extend “Extended Security Maintenance” to the Universe repository, which covers community-maintained free and open-source software. Suppose you want to install Node.js; let’s check if the machine pulls the package from the repo:
| apt-cache policy nodejs |
| nodejs: Installed: (none) Candidate: 4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4.2+esm1 Version table: 4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4.2+esm1 500 500 https://esm.ubuntu.com/apps/ubuntu xenial-apps-security/main amd64 Packages 4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4.2 500 500 http://us-central1.gce.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/universe amd64 Packages 500 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security/universe amd64 Packages 4.2.6~dfsg-1ubuntu4 500 500 http://us-central1.gce.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/universe amd64 Packages |
Ubuntu Pro adds security coverage for the most important open source applications like Apache Kafka, NGINX, MongoDB, Redis and PostgreSQL.
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