Re: Maximum uptime 497 days?

From: Skylar Thompson (skylar_at_cs.earlham.edu)
Date: 06/30/04

  • Next message: Craig Boston: "Re: Maximum uptime 497 days?" 
    Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 12:52:41 -0500
To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org

    On Mon, Jun 28, 2004 at 06:44:22PM +0200, Oliver Fromme wrote:
    > You did notice the smiley, didn't you?
    >
    > But seriously, I think that the widespread uptime fetishism
    > is somewhat dangerous. People often try hard to avoid
    > rebooting machines, just in order to "save their precious
    > uptime", even if there are good reasons to reboot.
    >
    > A machine with 1.5 years of uptime -- be it in an isolated
    > environment or not -- has accumulated the bugs of 1.5 years
    > that have been fixed in the latest version of the OS, so to
    > speak.
    >
    > In fact there is software which I wouldn't want to run even
    > if it were outdated for only a few days. Mysql is one such
    > example. Every time I looked at the huge list of bugs that
    > have been fixed in the latest version, I almost got a heart
    > attack. (Changing to PostgreSQL was very healthy.)

    A lot of security holes can be patched without rebooting. In general, only
    kernel updates strictly require a reboot. There have been a few kernel
    security vulnerabilities released in the past couple years, but a lot of
    them are for DoS attacks, not privelege escelation. 

    -- 
-- Skylar Thompson (skylar@cs.earlham.edu)
-- http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~skylar/

  • Next message: Craig Boston: "Re: Maximum uptime 497 days?"