when must I reboot?

[Rob Mahurin <robm@mad.scientist.com>]

I'm a little curious as to under exactly what circumstances a reboot
is actually necessary.  I know a reboot is necessary to load a new
kernel and that the power inside the box must be off to install or
remove internal hardware --- are there any other times when a reboot
is not optional?

For example, you can plug and unplug an idle printer without any
difficulty.  I've heard that if you shut down gpm and X and any other
rodent-listening programs you can also change the mouse without any
problems.  I'm guessing there's a way to do this with the keyboard or
the monitor, if maybe you could remotely shut down the console or
something.  I think you can do an "init 1" to get into single-user and
do single-user things without losing uptime, even repartition a disk
if you're brave.  (I might try this in a couple of weeks and thought
it would be a cool thing to tell my winfriends (and also my
unixfriends) that I did without rebooting.)  

I don't intend to try all of these things (I like my peripherals,
thanks).  I'm just curious: when is a hardware reboot absolutely
unavoidable?

Rob

-- 
Eat right, stay fit, and die anyway.