Novell, Inc.

Suse LLC

Oracle International Corporation

Peter Bowen

Nathaniel Friedman

The system and method described herein may upgrade kernels in cloud images deployed in cloud computing environments without having to rebuild a machine image that contains a root file system for the cloud image. For example, the cloud image may include a ramdisk that compares the kernel booted in the cloud image to the root file system to verify whether the machine image contains a directory hierarchy matching an operating system release for the kernel. In response to the machine image containing the matching directory hierarchy, the root file system may be mounted for execution in the cloud computing environment. Alternatively, in response to the machine image lacking the matching directory hierarchy, the ramdisk may dynamically create the matching directory hierarchy and inject modules that support the kernel into the root file system prior to mounting and delivering control to the root file system.

System and method for upgrading kernels in cloud computing environments

A system and method for supporting a virtual appliance is provided. In particular, a support engine may include an update server that can manage a workflow to update an appliance in response to detecting upstream updates to one or more software components that have been installed for the appliance. For example, the workflow may generally include managing a rebuild the appliance to install the upstream updates and further managing an integration test to verify that the rebuilt appliance behaves correctly with the upstream updates installed. In addition, the support engine may further include a support analysis manager that can analyze the software components that have been installed for the appliance in view of various heuristic rules to generate a support statement indicating whether support is available for the appliance.

Rebuilding a first and second image based on software components having earlier versions for one or more appliances and performing a first and second integration test for each respective image in a runtime environment

Networked resources that are not located behind a proxy authentication server may be enabled to use the proxy authentication server for authentication. This may provide one or more of the features associated with a proxy authentication server (e.g., centralized administration of authentication and/or access information, enhancing software security, centralized administration of permission information, and/or other features) for the resources not located behind the proxy authentication server. These features may be provided without requiring substantial modification of the proxy authentication server.

System and method for implementing a proxy authentication server to provide authentication for resources not located behind the proxy authentication server

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Ottawa, Canada

Peter Bowen