Given that it's impossible to "aptitude update" your way to a new kernel on an Amazon EC2 instance, I was wondering if it ever makes sense to apply kernel updates. My guess is no, and that I should have apt ignore all kernel updates (using the "aptitude hold" command or similar). Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
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You're right that there's no point in installing them on a running instance. However, you should make sure that you are still notified when there are updates, install them in your AMI, and reboot your instances when possible. This is especially important for patching kernel-level vulnerabilities.

Kamil Kisiel
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Since the release of the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS images that use the pv-grub kernel, you actually can "aptitude update" your way to a new kernel on an Amazon EC2 instance.

Mike Conigliaro
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+1 for the info and links (+0 for answering your own question :-) ) – Henk Jul 27 '11 at 20:27