How do I know when a reboot is required?

[Wade Chandler]

Keith G. Robertson-Turner wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:44:16 +0000, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> 
> 
>>On Mon, 2004-01-12 at 23:36, Don wrote:
>>
>>>With MS Windows, it seems a reboot is required after nearly every
>>>software update.
> 
> 
>>In principle, the only update for which a reboot is needed is Linux (since
>>it is the most common kernel of the GNU system), but even this may change
>>in the future.
> 
> 
> That would be good, it would certainly massively cut downtime on servers.
> 
> The only way I can think of implementing this would be to perform a kind
> of quick suspend/resume, where the "resume" remaps to a new running
> kernel, but surely all services and current tasks would need to be
> restarted too.
> 
> -
> K.
> 
> 
> 
Remember, if you are updating packages for programs which already have 
the .so or other file loaded, the only way to get them to start using 
that new code is to restart them.  So, if you do a full system update, 
it may be faster to reboot, switch run levels and back again, or create 
scripts to restart the pieces you update often.  I usually just reboot 
after an update.  It saves me the headache of remembering.  Unless you 
are using an encrypted file system or some other type of password 
protected startup you could automate this.  Though most server updates 
aren't a good idea to automate.  You might break functionality your 
server applications use by not reading change logs and readmes.

Wade