On 11/03/2013 08:23 AM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
Michael Scherer wrote:
However, since you didn't explained at all what are the issues you are
facing with the new approach, and since you have only explained how you
are doing on your 20 servers ( which is totally unrelated to the
question of desktops, BTW, and which would still be usable at your
convenience on anything you maintain ), I am quite sceptic on your whole
intervention.
The issues are that:
* updates require 2 reboots,
* you cannot use what you upgraded before doing the reboots,
* in particular, you cannot install new packages built against the updated
  ones before the reboots,
* security fixes also only take effect after the reboots.

Another issue is that it's a negative user experience---people either are interrupted at a time of sysadmin's choosing, or, worse, turn the computer off, and then turn it back on later expecting to use it promptly,  and have to wait much longer. And then it happens again, and again, with regularity. This is a problem for any kind of delayed updates---even those scheduled for re-login instead of reboot.

We don't have a way of telling which updates REQUIRE reboot(*)--but solving this problem by rebooting always is not right, in my opinion.

p


(*) Such list may not even be possible: it would obviously include the kernel, and currently running applications/services which cannot be reloaded, and even subsystems that might have been initialized one way but now must be initialized differently, and ...