Re: upgrading packages that are in use, especially X or gnome
On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 02:12:14AM -0600, Alex Malinovich wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-11-13 at 17:36, Tom wrote:
> > 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?
>
> 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.
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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