Dr Andrew C Aitchison wrote:
What do other groups do about updating applications and machines
with long running processes ?
My users run two sorts of long running processes, with different
problems when it comes to updates.
First, I have users who never log off. Thus applications like
firefox and pdf viewers will be running when they are updated.
Some time later these applications may try to load and run plugins
which have been removed/updated.
I never logoff, and rarely reboot anything between power failures. In my
usage (home, small office), I've never felt the need to update to the
latest kernel just because it's there. I did feel the need last year
when CentOS4 (and RHEL I think) had a series of kernels that locked up
after some time on my hardware.
Applying updates and keeping on using the system has never caused a
problem that I've noticed, open shared libraries and such are not
actually deleted until every process has closed them. New versions of
applications get the updated libraries.
Given "binary compatibility" I don't anticipate a problem, except when
there are major updates such as firefox 1,5 to 2.0 or to 3.0.
If an application crashes, I just restart it.
Second, I have users with long running calculations (often weeks
or more) which would be interrupted if the machine were rebooted into an
updated kernel. User-writing code often check-points, so the actual
calculation time lost is not significant, but calculations in
commercial packages such as Mathematica and Maple are often less good
about check-pointing.
Then don't updated them until there is a time available to do so.
Presumably, they're sensibly firewalled and otherwise protected from the
ungodly?
How do people balance the disruption of killing user processes
against the need to update to the latest versions of software ?
Updating software is to prevent a problem you might have. In your case,
updating software is more likely to cause grief than prevent it. I'd not
update until I could take the system out of service. After updating,
your systems might need some QA to ascertain they're still fit for service.
--
Cheers
John
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