Is a restart REALLY required after an upgrade?

[John Vivirito]

> 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
> 
things like kernel updates and hal updates you have to restart to boot
into them. now i dont know about etch (but you cant use a kernel your
not booted into) etch may not have kernel updates again i dont know
never ran it.
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GnomeFreak

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