How do install security updates on an Amazon Linux AMI EC2 instance?

Question

I see the following notices displayed on login:

   __|   __|_  )

    _|(     /  Amazon Linux AMI

  ___| \___|___|

  See /usr/share/doc/system-release/ for latest release notes.

  There are 30 security update(s) out of 39 total update(s) available

How do I install these updates on my machine?

Answer 1

Amazon Linux AMIs download and install any critical or important security updates at launch time. this is why you see that message saying that some security updates are available.

Although, security updates can also be applied after the instance is running, using the following command:

yum update --security