Is a restart REALLY required after an upgrade?

[C Hamel]

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On Tuesday 11 April 2006 11:23, Max Andersen wrote:
> Craig Hagerman wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am using Dapper Drake. I have been running apt-get update and
> > apt-get dist-upgrade once a week or so to make sure everything is up
> > to date. There is a new icon in Dapper in that says "restart
> > required". If you mouse over it it tells you that some security
> > updates won't be effective until you restart.
> >
> > What is up with this. I have another machine running debian unstable.
> > It has been up for months, through many upgrades with no need to
> > restart. I was under the impression that *nix systems didn't need to
> > be restarted unless you wanted to switch to using a newer kernel. Can
> > someone tell me - do I REALLY have to restart the machine after an
> > upgrade? and if so why?
> >
> > Craig
>
> haven't you just got kernel 2.6.15-20? or what packages are you talking
> about? might be if a heavy load of packages has landed on your machine,
> and the changes are so heavy that the instructions on how to 'reload'
> the configuration might be too exhaustive.
>
> but more enlightened people might help, if you specify what packages
> exactly you installed that requires a restart.
>
> Max
I have read, time and again, that w/Linux the reboot is optional.  Still, I 
nearly always reboot just to make certain.  The main reason I do that is when 
I was running SuSE I was constantly running into trouble.  Things would work 
just fine after an update ...until I rebooted.  Gentoo, ditto.  Consequently, 
rebooting post-update became a habit I will not soon break.
- -- 
	...CH
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