Re: Patches that require a reboot

From: Dr. David Kirkby (nowhere_at_nowhere.com)
Date: 09/20/04 

Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 21:36:40 +0100

Dave Uhring wrote:

> OK, point taken; thanks.
>
> Now what about those other patches which mandated a useless reboot?

My experience of Suns is quite limited (a few workstations at work where
I'm not the system admin), and a few smallish systems I've personally
owned (IPC, IPX, SS4, SS5, SS20, U30, U60 and U80). But in my limited
experience,

T_install_patches >> T_reboot_to_level_3

where
T_install_patches is the time to install one or more patches, and
T_reboot_to_level_3 is the time it takes for a system to reach run
level 3 after a reboot.

At best you are only going to save about 1-2 minutes if you choose not
to reboot, but go from single-user mode to multi-user mode. So there
seems no point in avoiding a reboot.It's not worth thinking about
really. If you have put the machine in single user mode, you might as
well reboot. Patches can go wrong, and so its better to do a reboot to
at least have a chance of detecting some problems.

Obviously is downtime can't be tolerated, and you choose to install in
multi-user mode (based on a careful check of the README), that's a
different issue. But if you are already in single-user mode, why not
just reboot?? It must be the safest way, and the time loss is very small.

My original question was different and I don't think has been answered.
If you install a lot of patches, and a large number say reboot, then
rebooting after each patch saying this would be very time consuming. I'd
like to think that is always unnecessary, but nobody has confirmed there
are no instances where it would be useful (or mandatory) to reboot after
installing a patch, even if the next thing you wish to do is install
another patch.

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