[ProgSoc] On rebooting servers

[daedalus <jpw001@nospam.its.maynick.com.au>]

At a meeting today the rather curious (to me, at least) practice of 
regularly rebooting unix servers came under fire from myself and one 
other person. Everyone else was of the opinion that this was a Good 
Thing, and not a Bad Thing, as I maintain. I am interested in seeing how 
widespread this practice is, or if there are more people or believe, as I 
do, that a reboot should be a last resort and ideally should never happen.

I realise there are certain circumstances in which reboots become 
necessary but surely these are abnormal conditions which should be 
repaired? Memory leaks in applications are cited as a justification for 
reboots, as are zombie processes. Though I'm not right up on either of 
these, I'm sure other less drastic measures could be taken to repair a 
leaky machine than to bounce it.

-- 
+---------------------------+-----------------------------------------+
|      Justin Warren        | justin.warren@nospam.its.maynick.com.au        |
|   Systems Administrator   | daedalus@nospam.progsoc.uts.edu.au             |
| Mayne Nickless Express IT | http://www.progsoc.uts.edu.au/~daedalus |
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| Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT after you...  |
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