We are pleased to announce that there will be a Live Update Microconference at Linux Plumbers 2025: https://lpc.events/event/19/contributions/2004/ This microconference aims to bring together developers from across the kernel to discuss topics related to Live Update support in Linux. Live Update is a specialized reboot process where selected devices are kept operational and kernel state is preserved and recreated across a kexec. For devices, DMA and interrupts may continue during the reboot. The primary use-case of Live Update is to enable hypervisor updates in cloud environments with minimal disruption to running virtual machines. During a Live Update, a VM can pause and its state is stored to memory while the hypervisor reboots. PCIe devices attached to those VMs (such as GPUs, NICs, and SSDs), are kept running during the Live Update. After the reboot, VMs are recreated and restored from memory, reattached to devices, and resumed. The disruption is limited to the time it takes to complete this entire process. With Live Update infrastructure in place, other use-cases may emerge, like for example preserving the state of GPU doing LLM, freezing running containers with CRIU, and preserving large in-memory databases. Topics to be discussed at the microconference include: - Live Update Orchestrator (state machine, userspace API, implementation) - Generic infrastructure for preserving file descriptors across Live Updates - Live Update support for specific files (memfd, iommufd, VFIO cdev, etc.) - Integration of Live Update with the PCI subsystem and Linux device model - Integration of Live Update with IOMMU and Interrupt Remapping drivers - Serializing, deserializing, and versioning kernel state that is passed across Live Update - Persistence of movable memory - Leveraging suspend/resume functionality for device state preservation - Optimizing kernel shutdown and boot times - Support for Confidential VMs - Automated testing Please submit your proposals at https://lpc.events/event/19/abstracts/ and select "Live Update MC" as the track. Submissions are due on or before 11:59PM UTC on Wednesday, September 10, 2025. We look forward to seeing you at LPC!
