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

[Adam Carter]

>
> 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.

:)