tom

I know you don't need to reboot after you apt-get upgrade, but I'm a bit
curious about upgrading packages that are in use.

I knowly vaguely that the kernel allows you to replace executables that
are in use so "it all works", but I have questions.

*Services like cupsys or inetd seem to stop, do a clean replace, and
restart, during an upgrade, so they always upgrade cleanly (except for
not being availble during upgrade). Correct?

*Things like X or gnome-applications which may be running during an
upgrade do get upgraded, but until you restart those applications, the
old versions are running, and your settings files could potentially get
hosed if the upgrades are radical. So basically you need to exit and
restart X if gui-ish things in use are upgraded. Correct?

*Some libraries are static-linked, so if they are upgraded, no running
binaries are affected. (Only next time you compile a program).
Dynamically linked libraries require your apps to be restarted.
Correct?

What I usually do is see what's upgraded, and if many running things are
upgraded, I log out of everything and then log back in, but I never
reboot. Is this the right thing to do, or is it unnecessary?


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alex malinovich

I always log out and log back in just in case after an upgrade. In
regards to the config file updates, most programs generally only read
the configuration file at startup, so changing the config file won't
affect the running process. The few programs that actually check their
config files at various points during run time, I'd imagine the package
maintainers would account for in some way or another.
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Alex Malinovich
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tom

Ah, so what I do - log out after an upgrade, unless it's obviously
things that I'm not running -- is the "Right Thing".

I was worried about odd applications that write to their config files at
shutdown (I'm thinking especially of the more complex XML files KDE and
Gnome apps seem to spew all over the place), when the format of the
config file changes in a radical way. That's why, if I notice X or
Gnome stuff being upgraded, I exit X before upgrading. I was just
wondering if I was being overparanoid. Sounds like not.


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