EMB-320 · Embedded Linux & BSP · Advanced
Long-Term Maintenance Strategy — full syllabus
Keeping a shipped product secure and buildable for a decade, which is where most embedded programmes fail.
Who this course is for
Senior engineers and architects owning a shipped embedded product for its whole life — the people who will still be there when the kernel, the toolchain and the build host are all out of support.
Prerequisites
- Experience shipping at least one embedded Linux product
- Yocto or Buildroot fluency
- Familiarity with CVE tracking and stable kernel concepts
Course outline
Day 1 — Staying supported
- LTS kernel selection: support horizons and what 'maintained until' really means
- Stable cadence and the cost of falling behind
- Tracking CVEs against your actual component set, not the distribution's noise
- Triage records that survive audit: reachability, applicability, action
- The hidden dependencies: toolchain, build host and third-party binaries
Day 2 — The decade plan
- Backporting policy: when to take a stable point release vs a single fix
- Regression risk management for a product in the field
- Reproducible builds and archiving the toolchain so year eight builds like year one
- Planning a distro version upgrade before you are forced into one
- End-of-life policy: last-build, source escrow and telling customers
Hands-on labs
- Lab: Build a CVE-tracking worksheet from a real SBOM and triage a week's worth of kernel CVEs against it
- Lab: Rehearse a backport: take an upstream fix onto your product kernel, resolve the divergence and verify equivalence
- Lab: Archive a toolchain and build environment, then rebuild a year-old image from the archive and diff the results
- Lab: Draft a distro upgrade plan for a supplied legacy product: inventory, risk list, staged migration and rollback
- Lab: Run a 'year eight' exercise: the build host is gone, the vendor portal is down — reproduce your image from what you archived
Capstone project
Produce a long-term maintenance dossier for a supplied legacy product scenario: LTS and component support-horizon map, a CVE triage process with worked records, a backport and regression policy, an archived-and-verified reproducible build, and a timed distro upgrade plan — reviewed as a decision document your management could sign.
What you leave with
- A support-horizon map for your kernel and key components
- A CVE triage process tied to your real SBOM
- A backport policy with regression controls
- A verified archived toolchain and reproducible build
- An upgrade plan written before the emergency, not during it
Upcoming dates
| Dates | Where | Seats | Early bird | Regular | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Nov – 23 Nov 20262 full days | RiyadhIn person · KAFD Conference Centre | 5 of 14 | SAR 5,400until 23 Oct | ||
| 29 Nov – 30 Nov 20262 full days | Kuwait CityIn person · Al Hamra Tower | 10 of 14 | KWD 450until 30 Oct | ||
| 29 Nov – 30 Nov 20262 full days | MuscatIn person · Knowledge Oasis Muscat | 5 of 14 | OMR 560until 30 Oct | ||
| 6 Dec – 9 Dec 20264 half-days | Gulf bandLive online · 09:00–13:00 GMT+3 | 17 of 20 | US$1,040until 6 Nov | ||
| 7 Dec – 8 Dec 20262 full days | OttawaIn person · Kanata North Tech Park | 10 of 14 | CAD 1,960until 7 Nov | ||
| 14 Dec – 15 Dec 20262 full days | TorontoIn person · MaRS Discovery District | 5 of 14 | CAD 1,960until 14 Nov | ||
| 14 Dec – 15 Dec 20262 full days | LondonIn person · Shoreditch Works | 10 of 14 | GBP 1,120until 14 Nov | ||
| 14 Dec – 17 Dec 20264 half-days | Europe bandLive online · 09:00–13:00 CET | 6 of 20 | US$1,040until 14 Nov | ||
| 14 Dec – 17 Dec 20264 half-days | Americas bandLive online · 13:00–17:00 ET | 11 of 20 | US$1,040until 14 Nov | ||
| 21 Dec – 22 Dec 20262 full days | BerlinIn person · Factory Görlitzer Park | 5 of 14 | EUR 1,320until 21 Nov |
Book a seat, or bring this course to your team
Seats can be reserved online; private delivery runs on-site or live online, adapted to your stack.
Questions about fit or prerequisites? Email hello@kernelsystems.academy. To save this syllabus, print this page to PDF from your browser.