Grant <emailgrant <at> gmail.com> writes:
> I'm realizing that some updates (emerges and etc-updates) won't take > effect until a certain daemon is restarted, or perhaps until the > system is rebooted. How can I be sure that I do what is necessary for > updates to take effect? Is it just a matter of understanding what is > being updated so I can restart daemons or reboot as necessary? Well, my experience is that is no 'silver bullet' to answer this question, because there are tens of thousands of different software programs you can run, not to mention lots of different kernel and Window manager environments that may or may not affect the chosen process(es) you are running. Some programs spawn off many child processes that have a life/mind of their own, depending on how the system is setup, threading, and the acutual code that the child process uses. There are many more possible variants, but, hopefully you start to get the picture. 'rc-update show' is a good tool to start with to see what get's started at boot time and by the default run level. Some applications may work correctly with the new version upon env-update && source /etc/profile other may need a lower-level jolt to get running correctly. Others, related to the environment, such as KDE, may require killing the app or kill -HUP to get it to restart and run correctly, while others may require you to login out and log back in, if the program depends on your login processes. Others may require extensive process restarting/reinitialization to the point of a system reboot, particularly if it's kernel related or a module that does not correctly load/unload into kernel space.... Other apps use other obscure interfaces into the Kernel or are individually unique (discourage nowadays but not completely gone). Rebooting should be a last resort. I ususaully try the most not intrusive thing until I get it to work, with a system reboot being of last resort. Best thing to do is to test what's needed for whatever program/process is in question. Many things group together in that they a require similar action to restart/run correctly after tweaking or recompiling. Some Object Oriented code, such as JAVA, suffers from what is know as 'memory leaks' which may not affect a running system/processes for quite some time... I hope these ramblings give you some understaning that the the answer depends on lots of parameters across the space of all processes.... A specific question about a specific process/program/daemon can be answered with specificity... YMMV James -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
