Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New Intel CPU flaws discovered

[Dale]

Adam Carter wrote:
>
>     something even worse.  Since rebooting is when those tend to
>     fail/break/whatever, it is yet another reason I avoid rebooting. 
>
>
> I take the opposite approach. If I update the kernel and reboot often,
> I see the following benefits;
> - Each increment in version is smaller, therefore there's less change
> per update, which make it easier to troubleshoot if there's problems
> - Doing something regularly is practice, and practice makes perfect.
> If you were to update regularly you would become more proficient and
> confident with doing the init thingy (initrd?)
> - If a hardware issue occurs, I find it at a good time when i'm not
> busy, and have the time to troubleshoot
> - Getting the benefits of the automated kernel code testing (eg
> syzbot, KASAN) that is used these days finding issues that then get
> fixed (including security issues). You'd have to assume that over the
> overall quality of the kernel is improving at a faster rate now than
> before those extra checks were in place.
>  
> At work I have raised tickets to have systems with big uptimes have
> their hardware status reviewed then restarted, a couple of days before
> I undertake risky/critical work. That way I can have more confidence
> in the system's health before starting. The classic one is where OPS
> haven't noticed that disks in a RAID array have died years ago...
>
>     Even when I have a power fail here, it makes me very nervous to
>     shutdown. 
>
>
> Another benefit of regular updates would be to reduce stress of
> deciding to shutdown, as you will have more confidence that the
> systems are healthy when you need to do it.
>
> :)


My problems with init thingys date all the way back to to the Mandrake
9.1 days when I first used Linux.  At that time, I didn't make the init
thingys at all, the OS did that during install or updates.  Still, they
would work but eventually a update or something would break them which
left me with a unbootable OS.  After a few times with that, I grew to
hate the init thingys and have hated them ever since.  It is just one
more thing that tends to fail and since it shouldn't really even be
needed, since it wasn't for many years, I would rather not have one at
all.  I find it odd that I can build a kernel from scratch that boots
and works on the first try but that silly init thingy seems to cause
problems even when not messed with.  I might add, the init thingy is one
reason I left Mandrake.  Gentoo didn't require the stupid thing and for
years when I didn't have one, rebooting wasn't a issue since I was
confident my kernels would work.  After all, even back then, I didn't
change or update the kernels that often. 

As to hardware, I had one time where that was a issue.  Power failed and
a shutdown was needed.  When I went to power back up, the CPU fan
wouldn't spin up.  After a couple drops of oil was added, it was
spinning up again and of course, I ordered a replacement fan right
away.  I don't recall ever having any other hardware problem.  Thing is,
even if I had shutdown a week earlier, that fan may have worked fine. 
Who knows when it would have eventually failed. 

As I also said, my system is almost always doing something I need it to
do.  It is doing things that it can't do if I'm rebooting or shutting
down.  It is certainly something it can't do if it us unable to boot due
to a broken init thingy.  If I wanted a system that required rebooting
on a regular basis to work, I'd be using windoze not Linux.  Reboots
frequently fixes windoze issues but doesn't usually do so with Linux. 

As I said before, for some the advice is good advice.  For me, it is
not.  It is counterproductive even for me in my use case.  I can't think
of anything that will be changing that either.  If how I use my system
changes, that may change things.

Dale

:-)  :-)