Hello, i hope you all doing well. There are 6 updates available in software package updates:
grub-common
GRand Unified Bootloader (common files)
New version 2.12-1ubuntu7.1
Noble-updates
grub-efi-amd64
GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 version)
New version 2.12-1ubuntu7.1
Noble-updates
grub-efi-amd64-bin
GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 modules)
New version 2.12-1ubuntu7.1
Noble-updates
grub-efi-amd64-signed
GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 version, signed)
New version 1.202.2+2.12-1ubuntu7.1
Noble-updates
grub-pc-bin
GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (PC/BIOS modules)
New version 2.12-1ubuntu7.1
Noble-updates
grub2-common
GRand Unified Bootloader (common files for version 2)
New version 2.12-1ubuntu7.1
Noble-updates
Is it safe to update? Has anyone made these updates? Also is it safe to update every time a new update is being available on live environment? Is there any way to revert if anything goes wrong?
Are they flagged as security updates? If so, it isn’t safe to NOT update them. I know SafeBoot was flagged as problematic lately. I don’t know if this is related or not.
Define “safe”? Do you trust the people who make your operating system?
I’m sure thousands, maybe millions, of people have installed these updates. You’d need to check the forums for your OS to see if anyone has run into problems.
Safety requires an up-to-date system. Updates are made to fix bugs and patch security issues. Running out of date software on a world-facing server is a disaster waiting to happen.
Usually, you can just install the prior package version using your package manager and specifying the version. But, in the case of grub, if something goes badly wrong, you probably lose the ability to boot. So, in this case, you want to make sure you have good backups (you should always have good backups, there are more things that can go wrong than you can imagine, and sometimes restoring from a backup is the best/fastest way to recover).
It is very unlikely anything will go wrong. The good OS vendors (of which Ubuntu qualifies, if only barely) always test stuff like this before pushing updates. But, being prepared for things to go wrong is the way to go, not doing everything you can do avoid updating software (which, again, is a guarantee of catastrophe at some point in the future).
Hello Joe and thank you very much for your response and explanation. I use the word safe because i am afraid of breaking something due to my inexperience. In your opinion what is the best practice in managing a server beside security updates.
e.g. update immediatily when there is a new update or make bigger updates once in a while and be prepared for the worst ?
I have backups but not every time restoring from a back works out of the box.