Attach a machine to your subscription¶

Overview¶

In this tutorial you will learn how to find your Ubuntu Pro token and attach it to an Ubuntu LTS machine.

Note

This tutorial is for machines with internet access. If you have an airgapped environment, see Ubuntu Pro for airgapped environments.

What you’ll learn¶

How to retrieve your Ubuntu Pro token and attach it to your Ubuntu LTS machine/s
How to check for and apply security updates on your Ubuntu machine, including security updates for Ubuntu Universe packages which are only available with Ubuntu Pro

What you’ll need¶

An Ubuntu Pro subscription - free or paid - with access to the Ubuntu Pro dashboard already set up. If you have not done so, follow Initial account setup
An Ubuntu machine running any LTS version of Ubuntu from 16.04 onwards
Sudo access
Ubuntu Pro client
Internet access

Get the latest Ubuntu Pro client¶

Make sure that the Ubuntu Pro client is installed and up to date:

$ sudo apt install ubuntu-advantage-tools

When you get the latest client, run apt update again to make sure all package data is up to date.

$ sudo apt update

Check or create your Ubuntu Pro subscription¶

You access your Ubuntu Pro token from the Ubuntu Pro dashboard. Make sure you have followed the steps under Initial account setup to log in to this dashboard.

Next, retrieve the token under ‘Your subscriptions’:

Attach your Ubuntu LTS machine to an Ubuntu Pro subscription¶

Important

For individual desktop, VM and physical server subscriptions, attach your token directly on your machines. For customers with a VM cluster, attach the token directly on your virtual machines. There is no need to use the token on the physical hosts unless they also run on Ubuntu.

Now that we have our Ubuntu Pro token, we can attach it to our Ubuntu instance. Open the terminal on your Ubuntu LTS, and type the following command:

sudo pro attach [YOUR_TOKEN]

Some of the Ubuntu Pro services are automatically enabled while others remain disabled until you switch them on:

$ sudo pro attach [YOUR_TOKEN]
Enabling default service esm-infra
Updating package lists
Ubuntu Pro: ESM Infra enabled
Enabling default service livepatch
Canonical livepatch enabled.
This machine is now attached to 'Ubuntu Pro - free personal subscription'

SERVICE          ENTITLED  STATUS    DESCRIPTION
esm-apps         yes       enabled   Expanded Security Maintenance for Applications
esm-infra        yes       enabled   Expanded Security Maintenance for Infrastructure
fips             yes       disabled  NIST-certified core packages
fips-updates     yes       disabled  NIST-certified core packages with priority security updates
livepatch        yes       enabled   Canonical Livepatch service
usg              yes       disabled  Security compliance and audit tools

NOTICES
Operation in progress: pro attach

Enable services with: pro enable <service>
Account: [YOUR_EMAIL]
Subscription: Ubuntu Pro - free personal subscription

This output depends on your Ubuntu LTS version, for instance ‘fips’, ‘fips-updates’ and ‘usg’ may not be available for the newest LTS version of Ubuntu.

Congratulations - Ubuntu Pro is now enabled on your machine¶

Well done! Your machine now has access to Ubuntu Pro repositories. Now every time you update your software, you will be downloading patches from Ubuntu Pro’s Expanded Security Maintenance repositories. You can continue performing updates as you normally would - with ‘unattended-upgrades’, the Software Updater on desktops, the ‘apt upgrade’ command in the CLI, or Landscape.

To ensure that all available CVE fixes are applied, run:

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

That’s all, folks¶

Good job, you made it! You should now know how to access and use Ubuntu Pro.

For instructions on how to enable specific services, review the Ubuntu Pro client documentation.