Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: "Poison BL." <poisonbl@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user <gentoo-user@l.g.o>
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] How often do you reboot?
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2017 23:56:34
Message-Id: CAOTuDKpVuQNC7QBVyCyun3Dn-JE+V1iNtfdrkRuc+9_mGoh27A@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] How often do you reboot? by Alan McKinnon
1 On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 5:30 PM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
2 wrote:
3
4 > On 30/01/2017 23:46, Grant Edwards wrote:
5 > > I've got a couple Gentoo machines that normally run 24/7. I've
6 > > learned over the years that it's a good idea to reboot them
7 > > occasionally (when I have some spare time and I know they're idle)
8 > > just to make they still can.
9 > >
10 > > I've settled on roughly once a month or so.
11 > >
12 > > What seems to happen if I don't do this is that some update (or
13 > > perhaps just a stupid configuration mistake on my part) will render
14 > > the machine non-bootable, and I won't discover it until several months
15 > > later at the worst possible moment when I'm in the middle of something
16 > > urgent and the power fails, or I type "reboot" into the wrong xterm,
17 > > or whatever. Or maybe those things don't happen to other people...
18 > >
19 >
20 > I'll wager the majority of experienced folks here do much the same as
21 > you, I know I do on my own boxes.
22 >
23 > One thing I've been trying to ram in at work is regular monthly reboots
24 > of all systems. You know how it goes - machine has 1000+ days uptime[1]
25 > w00t! w00t!
26 >
27 > and then the power goes off
28 > and then you find the drives won't spin up because the bearings are
29 > rumbling and the psu just can't deliver the oomph anymore to spin up all
30 > 8 drives at once
31 > and then the shit really hits the fan for real!
32 >
33 > So far I can't get agreement to do it (inertia? fear of loss of street
34 > cred? idiotic product owners? I dunno...)
35 > Maybe I'll sneak a monthly repeating change control in and just do it
36 >
37 > [1] 1000 days uptime these days is stupid. All it proves is that the
38 > admin is not doing kernel updates and the host probably leaks security
39 > holes like a sieve
40 >
41 >
42 > --
43 > Alan McKinnon
44 > alan.mckinnon@×××××.com
45 >
46 >
47 >
48 I ran into the same at work, though it's set in for the others that it
49 *needs* done (thank goodness for heartbleed & shellshock, actually, to
50 finally force it as policy), after we've had not just drives, but drive
51 controllers fail more than once. The one thing that I have grown to love is
52 a raid controller that staggers drive spinup... that does wonders for
53 making things last just a little longer... and if they're not actively
54 failing, just a little less eager to spin up, they've got another year in
55 'em ;)
56
57 --
58 Poison [BLX]
59 Joshua M. Murphy