How do you know when a reboot is required after yum update?

[Donald Russell]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 13:49, Roberto Ragusa <mail at robertoragusa.it> wrote:

> Donald Russell wrote:
> > Obviously a reboot is required when loading a new kernel....
> >
> > But in general, does yum leave some breadcrumb clue that some other
> > process can check? For example, maybe there's something in the package
> > files that yum sees and creates a "/rebootRequired" file which is always
> > deleted upon booting?
> >
> > If not, I think that'd be a cool idea.. the file could be
> > /rebootRequired.txt
> >
> > and contain a plain text list of packages that caused the condition. :-)
>
> It is quite apparent that you have a Windows like mindset. I say this
> without any will to offend you; I just observe:
> 1) the reboot idea
> 2) the file name with lowercase and uppercase mixed
> 3) the file extension .txt
>
> :-)
>
> Now the serious answer.
> The kernel case is obvious; installing a kernel is useless without a
> reboot.
> But in other cases the new stuff will be used together with the old one.
> For example, replaced libs will be used by programs freshly started, and
> old
> libs will be used for programs already running.
> So, the reboot is not strictly required. maybe you may want to restart
> some services or applications.
> And it always depends on the specific use of the apps.
> Say you install a new "tail" command with a security related fix.
> Would you reboot? Maybe not. But.... if you have a running tail -f on some
> log files where things under external control may be printed?
> Then maybe yes. Or.... you just restart the logging script, right?
>
> There are some cases (glibc vulnerability for example) where a reboot
> could be a good idea. But, guess what, if you upgrade glibc, the sshd
> process will be restarted (!) as that is considered an extremely sensitive
> daemon. I may want to restart network facing stuff like httpd, firefox
> and something else, but I do not worry too much about the clock applet
> currently running the unfixed glibc.
>
> (The iwl Intel driver forced me to reboot my laptop after more than 150
> days
> and I had really bad words in my mind for Intel and their buggy code;
> my work session was incredibly complex and useful to me... I hate reboots).
>


Thanks Roberto...

I'll try not to take offense at your observations of me based on my original
query. ;-)

Generally speaking I do not reboot my Linux machines unless I've installed a
new kernel.
There have been times though when "things seemed odd" after a particularly
large number of updates were applied... rather than spend untold amounts of
time trying to solve them, I did a quick reboot... perhaps that was
overkill, but it definitely caused all processes to restart.

Perhaps if I knew more of the internal details of what's what, I'd have
known that all was needed was to restart daemon "x"...

But, I'm not a member of that elite group (who know everything and are much
holier than "Windows mindset" people), so I do what works quickly and leaves
little unknown afterward.

I appreciate your explanations above, thanks for that.

Cheers
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