On Tue, Jun 06, 2000 at 06:40:34PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 06, 2000 at 08:36:26AM -0700, Paulo Henrique Baptista de Oliveira
> wrote:
> > Are there any O.S. that did not want to reboot when a new kernel is
> > installed?
> > I remember hearing that FreeBSD doesnt need this...
>
> well strictly speaking you don't usually have to reboot *immediatly*
> when you install a new kernel, unless your replacing it with the same
> version and have modules autoloaded (in which case they may not match
> the running kernel) but rebooting to make the new kernel active is
> almost universaly neccessary.
>
> i do remember hearing about (i want to say solaris) having the ability
> to actually load a new kernel into memory replacing the old one
> without rebooting. it sounded like a horrid hack, and it was "very
> highly" reccommended that the system be brought down to single user
> mode before attempting it. really i don't see the point there, all
> you save is your uptime (which is really dubious given the entire
> kernel structures are replaced) since you need to go single user you
> still have downtime (as far as any users are concerned).
>
> i don't know about FreeBSD's kernel upgrade procedure, but OpenBSD
> does need a reboot to activate a new kernel, but AFAICT that reboot
> does not have to be immediate, no real ill effects appear to happen by
> replacing /bsd and waiting a bit before rebooting. BSD's don't
> require you to reinstall the boot loader whenever you touch the kernel
> though ;-) (to be fair linux does not either if you use grub instead
> of lilo, non-x86 archs also generally have smarter boot loaders too,
> yaboot, silo etc)
>
> --
> Ethan Benson
> http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
AFAIK, Hurd doesn't require reboots. Of course, it is a modular
kernel. I suppose upgrading the microkernel would require a reboot.
--
Pat Mahoney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed."
-- Albert Einstein
