PKGS-7410 - Number of installed kernel packages

This information is provided as part of the Lynis community project. It is related to Lynis control PKGS-7410 and should be considered as-is and without guarantees. Any advice and commands should be tested before implementing them in production environments.

Control details
CategorySoftware
Application

Description

Most Linux distributions use a kernel package to easily allow upgrading it when bugs or security flaws were found. This test determines the number of installed packages.

How to solve

While it is fine to have a few kernel packages installed, the number should typically not be above 5 installed versions of the kernel package. Remove older versions to keep both the file system and boot loader clean.

Need more details?

Consider the upgrade to Lynis Enterprise to receive additional details and guidance. The Enterprise version helps to you with daily health checks of your environment, learn in-depth system hardening, and resources to protect your systems better.

See demo

About

Lynis is a technical security auditing tool for Unix flavors like Linux, macOS, AIX, Solaris, and *BSD. It is open source software and free to use. Typical usage include system hardening, compliance testing, and vulnerability scanning. The project has an active community, including development via GitHub.

Lynis Enterprise

Do you need to collect data from multiple systems or compliance reporting? Lynis Enterprise uses Lynis to collect the data and make your work easier.

Benefits: automate security audits, detailed reporting, compliance testing.

  • Centralized management
  • Improvement plan with priorities
  • Reporting
  • Dashboards
  • Predefined policies
  • Integration (API)
  • Improvement snippets for tools like Ansible, Chef, Cfengine, Puppet, and SaltStack
Take the Tour