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Vista To Be Updated Without Reboots
UltimaGuy writes "Microsoft is working on a new feature for Windows Vista, known as Restart Manager, which will update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine. From the article: 'If a part of an application, or the operating system itself, needs to updated, the Installer will call the Restart Manager, which looks to see if it can clear that part of the system so that it can be updated. If it can do that, it does, and that happens without a reboot.'"
"from the welcome-to-the-world-of-tomorrow dept"? More like welcome to unix of yesteryear. What's with the kid that always crosses the finish line last and somehow always gets perceived as the leader?
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
There is no reboot, just a breif BSOD, then you're back at teh login screen.
Are you...Are you some kind of genius?
No, ma'am, I'm just a regular Slashdot reader.
I've had the ability to kill services (daemons), upgrade them, and restart them without rebooting the system for years.
yet another Microsoft "innovation" that is decades behind the competition.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin
Part of the problem has always been that their DLL manager couldn't clean itself up without a reboot.
OCO is Loco
Damn! We should copy this feature into Linux! oh, wait....
what they forget to mention is you have to stand on one leg and hold a metal rod while a thunderstorm is occuring..
I think it still might be a better idea to reboot to linux and go from there :-)
What will I do all day long now?
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
If a part of an application, or the operating system itself, needs to updated, the Installer will call the Restart Manager, which looks to see if it can clear that part of the system so that it can be updated. If it can do that, it does, and that happens without a reboot.
Yes, and I am sure NOTHING could go wrong there...
How is this new, my {Unix| Mac| Linux} system has done this for years...
Ok, I don't want to hear any more about it.
So, with this new feature, will windows be ready for the desktop? Because it is years now that we hear "this year is THE year, it is ready for the desktop !"
Linux: Because rebooting is for adding hardware.
to go into safe mode and uninstall the damage done by the update.
It has "fragile" written all over it.
I suppose that there are reasons why Microsoft can't just leave an inode in place after unlinking it so that processes that use it don't lose it, but is this really the best workaround they can come up with?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
...of the new Restart Manager is the Dolby Stereo 5.1 system. It checks whether it can update without reboot, sees that there's no fucking way, then plays a sound behind your back - you turn and presto! - no reeboot needed!
They should win an award or something.
You guys auctually used to restart the whole machine. A simple logoff/login works too. Plus I never reboot. When it asks if I want to reboot now, I say no and keep going. I have rarely (like 1 in 100) had an issue.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
when I see it... 3 years from now when Vista is released.
Why do they think to do this now?
First they say that they're dropping features to make release.
Then they say they're going to release ahead of schedule.
Then they say they're now going to add a capability that *none* of the prior releases have had - six to eight months from their target release date?
Huh?!
Shake it all about..
Updating Windows without a reboot is truly a sign of the end times.
Wow, Microsoft is so innovative.
If Longhorn (or, Vitsa) is a brand new OS, built from the ground up, how is it they didn't build that in right from the start?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Even with current Windows OS's, the number of "reboot your machine for this change to take effect" messages isn't enough: the first piece of advice on any trouble is "reboot and see if the problem still occurs". All I can see the Restart Manager changing, is the advice line. Now it will be "I know the Restart Manager said you don't need to reboot, but try it anyway, OK!".
I doubt their *.Managers can handle them! Bingo!
What if it can't do it without a reboot? Does the system then have to shutdown and mess everything up?
One
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
At least windows has provided a (somewhat)user friendly GUI that can be deployed as a desktop standard across organizations. Last time I checked Linux is still trying to accomplish this as mentioned rigth here on /.
http://www.stockmarketgarden.com/
... what this basicly means is that i wont have to reboot my windows pc nearly as often as i do now ... well if the goal is to keep me from needing to reboot why is it that they are all over the bios and mb people to get boot times down to negligable amounts of time? do they thing they can disguse those times that i _do_need to reboot? that might be intersting...
| please wait while windows blanks your screen for 2 seconds while we install out critacal updates |
The more I learn about Windows the more I am surprised it runs at all
Wouldn't you like to come out of safe mode?
It takes longer then 17 seconds to reboot a server buddy boy.
It can take longer then 17 seconds just to load up a Database server. Being able to update without a reboot can save a company from potentially missing out of hundreds to thousands of transactions, as people click "Buy now" and are told, "We are currently updating our systems, please come back in approximately 30 minutes."
Would you? I wouldn't.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
I loose my mind every time I hear about another LongWait feature.
Then I losen up a little and get back to work.
Seriously, where's the innovation in "no reboots?"
So LongWait is fixing all of their current product problems? That means I *gotta* upgrade!
Something tells me they're going to do it right *this* time. I mean they can't overpromise *again* can they? No way!
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Restart Manager will work with Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, Microsoft Software Installer, and Microsoft Systems Management Server
Think there are enough updaters out there? I mean, OS X does this with one updater, and you just pick the relevant updates. It seems like that would be better. That way there is no need to access like 5 updaters, you can just use one.
This isn't a straight "OS X ROXXORS!!" comment, I'm just wonder why you need 5 updaters.
They are typically called System Administrators.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
One Reboot only.
One ring to bind them - should probably have more fiber and less rings in their diet.
Call centers around the world are now going to be deprived of their #1 troubleshooting step.
The only thing they have left now is the System Restore disk.
Now call centers are going to have to hire people who do more than just read scripts.
Now if they could only come up with an alternative to the Registry...
So it contacts the restart manager, and if it says it is possible to update without restart, it doesn't restart? And if, say it returns false, then it would still have to restart. I'm betting some intern made this:
class RestartManager {
public boolean canUpdateWithoutRestart() {
return false;
}
}
I wish the hell they would just make the the damned thing more stable in the first place.
Microsoft acts like a kid who won't eat his vegetables, won't do his homework, won't clean up after himself and won't take out the garbage and yells, "Hey, hey Ma look! I can balance a beachball on my nose! Aren't you proud of what a clever boy I am?"
I'd like to take Billg by the hair and tell him, "No Windows Vista for you young man until you fix all the broken crap in XP! And stop making faces at cousin Linus."
Insert witty sig here.
Despite the sarcastic comparisons to Unix, Windows NT has had the capability to update most system components while in use for a long time.
Typically, the user would exit applications before installing, but this is unecessary most of the time.
However, this capability has always required the person writing the installer program to not sabotage this capability by ignoring Microsoft's installation guidelines. Since the refrain from most developers is "what installation guidelines?", problems are frequent in practice.
The article indicates that the primary change is that this "Restart Manager" will discover dependencies at run time, and do the work of shutting down and restarting applications and services (daemons) -in their current state- automatically. It would do nothing for applications that the user can't do now, and nothing for services that can't usually be done by the administrator.
But automating it is nice; I can see where this would be useful.
You'll have to reboot anyway a couple hours later just because the machine is slowing down and having strange issues for no reason.
Well, I take it you've never tried to install the drivers for an HP Officejet G85. I must have spent days if not weeks of actual elapsed time installing these, uninstalling them, and installing them again, rebooting trying to find the right incantation that will make the damn thing work.
Stick with something older if you want, sheesh. All software has bugs, your post is so stupid on so many levels it makes me regret reading it.
Okay, so $soft still isn't ready for the server farm (IMHO). At least they're trying. AND they do make one helluva desktop, you gotta admit that! Much as I hate it, Windoze is the gold standard against which KDE and GNOME have been comparing themselves for years. Sure, *nix has many inherent advantages, advantages which go back to the basic core design of the OS; but the boys from Redmond have been making steady progress in closing the gap.
Of course, I don't think it's possible to reconcile the needs of their desktop "ease of use" and "configurability" with the demands of server "reliability". There's an essential incompatibility between the two. Still, give 'em credit for trying (and yes, I know they're only doing this in pursuit of the almighty dollar. What could be more American than that?).
Ive had FAR too many problems with windows that would MAGICALLY fix themselves after a reboot. Rather than expect these to disappear under Vista Id expect these incidences to raise drastically. Nice feature but too litle too late for me.
At least when one had to reboot to update, one could usually make an informed choice whether to interupt one's work, close everything, and reboot. One can only assume that the "update without reboot" process will not be without risk. That is not a slam against MS; software isn't perfect. One way we deal with such imperfection is by minimizing the consequences of a crash or fault.
What if "update without reboot" is, in the name of consumer friendliness, as well as in the supposed interest of the "mommies and daddies out there," both automatic and invisible, and something goes wrong and/or is corrupted in the middle of a vastly important project?
There is safety in being forced to reboot. It means you aren't doing something else.
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
If the 'restart manager' can selectively idle and replace Windows components and then return them to service without rebooting, it seems as though spyware or virii could potentially hijack the restart manager to do the same thing, making them more difficult to detect and remove without reformatting and reinstalling. Even worse would be stealth malware that would hijack a windows service on a running system with a substitute module, do their whatever-it-is dirty work, and then uninstall themselves and disappear without a trace. The user would be totally unaware that they were ever running, would not know what they did, and there would be nothing left to detect by anti-whatever software.
http://www.google.com/search?q=microsoft+scrum
You have 100s and 1000s of customers and you are running Windows as your server??
:)
Either you are lieing or you are full of shit
It can take longer then 17 seconds just to load up a Database server. Being able to update without a reboot can save a company from potentially missing out of hundreds to thousands of transactions, as people click "Buy now" and are told, "We are currently updating our systems, please come back in approximately 30 minutes." Would you? I wouldn't.
If you're processing hundreds of thousands of transactions in a 17 second period and the service is not load balanced across multiple systems allowing you to take any one server down and upgrade it, well you've made some very "interesting" design choices. Of course if you're trying run hundreds of thousands of transactions in 17 seconds using a Windows based service I guess it is obvious you're really into "interesting" design decisions.
Why is it that every Microsoft solution involves a "manager"? They never seem to get to the point and just fix a problem. Instead, we get these grandiose stacks of hierarchy. It's like the French government is behind every design decision.
Only on slashdot would a stupid post which seems like it's built on top of some fucking "bad post template" be modded to +5 Interesting...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Any chance that they will backport this to NT 4?
Sure would make installing all these proxy servers alot faster!
Install Patch/Reboot...Patch/Reboot...Service Pack/Reboot...Patch/Reboot...
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I am not doing that. I am just suggesting that there are times when a server will take longer then 17 seconds to reboot and that this new feature is a very useful thing to be added to the system.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
It's because when they cross the finish line last, all the spectators forgot about the race (and the winners) and think its an entirely different one.
This is based off of transactional NTFS, which is similiar to a writable snapshot that can be committed back to the MFT.
/ 04/25/411874.aspx
It is pretty cool stuff.. some early sample code from one of the developers is here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/because_we_can/archive/2005
Alas, the immutable locked-file-is-in-use problem has to be fixed one Win32::CreateFile() call at a time.
I suppose CreateFile calls without FILE_SHARE_READ (and no FILE_SHARE_WRITE) could be overridden and converted into TNTFS which would solve a huge amount of stupid lock problems.
Ok, so what happens when someone learsn to trick this reboot manager into doing theiur bidding. Say a virus, trojan, or worm "learns" how to get this thing to work for it. It's a system process right? Thus should have some pretty hefty access priviliges and probably a million holes to have to plug. I'm waiting for the new generation of bugs and security holes that can be exploited just from one new aspect of this OS. Way to go Microsoft!
Well, at least you won't have to reboot.
How am I ever going to get my PC to run properly now?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
wow, not enough sleep last night + too much coffee.
Gee, XP was supposed to have this, wasn't it? Granted, there are fewer reboots with XP, but I distinctly remember XP was supposed to do away with the "reboot" altogether.
All is prevelant in the world...
In most cases when Windows says YOU MUST REBOOT you never need to. obviously dumb applications installers are lying, usb hardware works fine.
Hey, stop being a cock. This is a good thing not a bad thing. Any process with root/Administrator privelages can call shutdown, why would this be any different?
The thing is, Windows is more like Linux and X Window combined. How well can this be done on the combination of the two? That said, this is something they could have done from Win 95 if not before, if they had only just worked on it. It's not like people haven't wanted this feature all this time.
The first thing we ask a user having trouble is if he/she tried rebooting. If they haven't then that usually solves their problem. The fact that their new system is so convoluted indicates that they haven't fixed Windows' spaghetti architecture (I guess Microsoft is a bunch of Pastafarians - go FSM!), so reboots are here to stay.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Call me a pessimistic, but I put this one in snowball's chance in hell likelihood. I mean, it's just as likely as the Israelis giving up Gaza Strip, the Red Sox and White Sox winning World Series, and Oprah appearing on the Late Show with Dave Letterman. And we all know those things won't happen.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This "new feature" has actually been on their list since they put the actual Vista feature lists on www.microsoft.com...they just decided to wait until now to bring it to everyone's attention...
At least windows has provided a (somewhat)user friendly GUI that can be deployed as a desktop standard across organizations. Last time I checked Linux is still trying to accomplish this as mentioned rigth here on /.
The X Windows-based graphical environments on GNU/Linux systems provide several (somewhat) user friendly desktops. Gnome, KDE, XFCE, and lots more. There is nothing preventing IT staffs from rolling them out in vast numbers. Just inertia and plain obstructionism. IT Windows monkeys act as Microsoft's agents. They resist change because they have the same interest in maintaining the status quo as their Microsoft masters. Eventually the freedom and cost benefits will force the move to GNU/Linux.
an ill wind that blows no good
Yeah buu you will still have to reboot the system regularly again to avoid crashes so really where is the advantage?
*nix provides a much higher uptime and has had this funtionality since its inception.
nice try microsoft but its too little too late.
Reality is a big nasty dragon. Fortunately I don't believe in dragons.
Just think, the ability to overwrite a critical piece of system data with malicious or even simply garbled data merely by modifying downloaded but not yet installed updates, modifying them on the fly while they are downloaded, or just writing your own code to masquerade as an update, and not even needing to wait for a reboot before you can write and / or execute!
Unpleasantries.
I read that as "Vista to be Updated Without Robots", and I wondered whether robots were supposed to be updating my computer now, or what?
If they don't update my computer anymore, they'll need something else to do in between protecting us from the terrible secret of space and eating old people's medicine for fuel.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
17 seconds? Maybe on your little toy that you call a computer. A *real* computer that you use to run some highly available, resource intensive process on needs longer than that just to initialize it's ECC memory... Not to mention the time it takes to scan the SAN, mount drives, start up services... All during that time you're hundreds of users are waiting for your system to come back, and you may be losing thousands of transactions per second of downtime.
If it's only taking you 17 seconds, it's clear that you only have a measly few gig, and that it's crappy non-ECC stuff. (Plus you probably have only gotten to a "working desktop". Your machine is likely still starting up stuff for the next few minutes while you wonder whiy your computer is so slow.)
Windows *needs* to be able to update almost everything without a reboot if it ever wants to grow up and be something more than a toy in the data center.
But I seem to remember hearing this before.
I remember reading about how the new Windows XP won't have to reboot as often for driver/software updates. Yet after every minor Windows Update, a reboot is required. I'm not holding my breath for this, because it seems more like a "we got it right this time, honest!" type thing than anything else. Especially with the "any file in use by Windows can't be touched" type of environment.
... above the level MS should be dealing with. Perhaps their time and effort (and ultimately our money) would be better spent on stabilisation/security/etc. --although this is perhaps some long term strategy to give excuses to longer release times. (I'm sure there's some formula in CS re: levels of complexity v. cost/time-to-delivery ...)
I don't doubt this is cool stuff, but it's probably best left in the lab.
No rebooting? But when will I have time to make my sandwich? Microsoft is trying to kill me! By starvation!
I quote others only in order the better to express myself. -- Michel de Montaigne
> Much as I hate it, Windoze is the gold standard against which KDE and GNOME have been comparing themselves for years.
That explains a lot!
Should have compared themselves with MAX OS X!
As far as I am concerned, Windoze UI is not all that great, and I much prefer KDE.
TODO: 753) write sig.
Wow. kill -HUP after ALL this time. :)
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
TFA only says that the Reboot Manager will try to stop and restart the affected part of the system, not that it absolutely can do it.
I don't think this actually helps at all. I can try to insert a newly compiled Linux kernel into my running system, but I won't be able to, I'll have to reboot. If a piece of software is not designed to be restarted without stopping the whole system, it won't, no matter how hard you try!
"I reject your reality, and substitute my own!"
It sounds like a fsckin' Rube Goldberg machine in comparison to everybody else's solution, which is to not require reboots to update most things in the first place, and to let the admin put all changes in place at his discretion, and to defer the problem of saving state to applications, because the application can best handle the equivalent of a SIGTERM itself. If a program is important enough, it will have its own handler to dump its state to disk.
Sure, it's an inventive solution, but an inventive solution isn't the most robust solution as often as you think and just as often doesn't belong on a production system; much of the time, complexity just makes for bad engineering. As such, I agree with the comment (from the article): You know it's true. They've had to resort to artificial supercomplexity because they painted themselves into a corner architecturally. Good luck getting this to work with any reliability.
I thought I remembered XP being promised as "almost never" needing a reboot for updates. This was supposed to be one of the great things about XP. But, I don't know if XP has ever updated itself and NOT asked for a reboot.
I just had to re-install Windows on my machine. The disk I had was XP SP1. I think it required four reboots for the updates.
Microsoft claim in 1999: "Most configuration changes will not require reboots in Windows 2000. Reboots are a thing of the past."
- turned out to be patently false.
Microsoft claim in 2002: "Most configuration changes will not require reboots in Windows 2003. Reboots are a thing of the past."
- turned out to be patently false.
Microsoft claim in 2005: "Most configuration changes will not require reboots in Windows Vista. Reboots are a thing of the past."
- hopefully they're right this time, but if not I won't be affected. Punting Exchange for Scalix Real Soon Now(tm) if testing goes fine.
Much of the problem stems back to the very thing which creates the security holes in Windows - the need for maintaining backwards compatibility. At some point Microsoft needs to make the deliberate choice to cut the cord and say "Sorry guys, but your old software will either need to be upgraded or run under emulation. To help users with the migration to our brand-new rewrite of Windows, we've decided to contribute to the WINE software project and include WINE in the new Windows and it will run most of your old software seamlessly under the new environment. By doing this we have finally put an end to traditional Windows security and stability problems.:"
I know, wishful thinking, but really, does Windows STILL need to support Win16 and does it STILL need to support Windows 9x applications? Does it STILL have to natively support DOS apps? Surely they can have a translation layer or include virtual machine support so that legacy apps can run in a fully protected memory segment and be prevented from writing to key system directories? If hobbiests can achieve it on Linux, BSD, etc. via wine and related projects, why can't Microsoft do this with their access to all of the undocumented system calls?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I, like most Slashdotters am forced to use Windows as part of my job and I would like to say this. THANK GOD! Jesus does this bug me! Install a program....reboot....install another...reboot! If this really works, then this will save me TONS of time. I like Linux. No reboots unless you upgrade the Kernel.
Gorkman
I'm sure that after installing the "Restart Manager" you'll have to restart, though.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
you know, if microsoft keeps including features in vista that i love in linux i might just switch... ...or not... but either way, like that microsoft is actually wising up to convenient things like no reboots. too bad other stuff will suck so bad that you'll need to reboot once a week and format twice a year anyway - of course, this is much better than the days of 95 where daily boots and and quartely formats were the norm. who know, maybe vista will be even better.
-1 redundant
+1 insightful
+1 interesting
-1 overrated
This scares me, microsoft cannot design an OS that runs stable on the best of days, now they are building in the ability to shut down bits and pieces of it? I think this is going to go to Hell in a handbasket and real quick.
Seriously.
I distinctly remember a bunch of hoopla about how Win2K wasn't going to require reboots, either. Stories were fed to the press prior to release about how Bill Gates sent down an edict that there would be no more gratuitous rebooting, or heads were going to roll in Redmond. Here we are, six years later, and nothing ever came of it.
Soooo.... remind me, Linux has been able to update the kernel without a reboot for... how long? And when you have to reboot linux, does it do it without having to save your work and close all applications?
If your *nix system needs occasional kernel upgrades without interrupting uptime long enough to reboot, use modules for everything. It uses slightly more memory, and when you do reboot it's slower, but most systems needing vast amounts of uptime will probably use a pared-down kernel anyway. So it'd be a minimal cost.
That said, why would you need to upgrade the kernel without interrupting the system? You'd at least need to test it, during which time you'd throw up a backup.
Obviously you haven't tried to stop various services. There's a large number that simply won't stop, and some that stop but don't release their file locks. In these cases, only a reboot will allow for those services/files to be updated.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
As others have indicated, the no-reboot feature is merely an advance on their current state of affairs.
This part sounds more ambitious, and a bit scary. It will be convenient for most users. But, there are times when I don't want an application saving what it has in memory to a file and going back to same spot.
I'm not sure that I'd leave this feature alive on my desktop.
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
The real reason windows can do updates without rebooting is that you can't replace in-use files since NTFS doesn't allow it. On unix, we've always had the idea of a reference-counted inode which we can replace at any time without killing the existing users of the file. Sounds from the article that this reboot manager is just a cludge to get around the fact that you still can't replace in-use files in Windows Longhorn.
It's an unlikely engineering premise that slapping on an after-the-fact-reboot-manager would yield useful results. If Vista hasn't been designed from the start for this, it's too late for varnish now.
/.er's?
So if, in fact, it was designed for this, why are we just hearing about it now? With a corporation this masterful with The Marketing Stick, there's likely something else going on nearby they don't want noticed.
What's under those rocks
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
"If you have to reboot, then what happens is that the system, together with the applications, takes a snapshot of the state: the way things are on the screen at that very moment, and then it just updates and restarts the application, or in the case of an operating system update, it will bring the operating system back exactly where it was," Allchin said.
So it will try not to reboot, but if it has to, it will take a snapshot of the state and reboot the application/OS and bring it back up in the same state. The article does NOT say reboots will 100% go away.
This is just outright false. Sorry.
Funny. Updates tend to be released on a monthly cycle.
Join Tor today!
Knowing windows, it'll probably have a million critical services which each accesses a different part of the system thus making this concept for windows null and void.
Didn't they promise no reboots for Windows 2000 and then again for XP. I'll believe it when I see it.
It is logical to assume they will implement this across their server products as soon as possible.
...and I only correct others when they limit themselves or ignore obvious reasons for certain technology developments.
Nobody likes downtime on servers, period, especially from forced reboots.
Testing it on less critical systems, such as home and desktop workstations also seems to be quite logical, since it won't cause undue negative impact on servers while they work out any issues related to this new technology.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
There were some colored windows, I opened them, and a wonderful vista (view) was shown to me.
I saw... a penguin.
"Her idea of wit is nothing more than an incisive observation humorously phrased and delivered with impeccable timing."
First, when you say 'UNIX' you seem to mean SysV - BSD didn't use init.d, neither do modern BSDs (OpenBSD uses the BSD system, Net- and FreeBSD use RCng, OS X uses Launchd), and neither do all modern UNIX systems (Solaris uses SMF). The SysV init is a horrendous design, which is why it is not popular.
Second, Restart Manager sounds like a whole lot more than SysV init - for one thing Windows has had the Services Control Panel for ages (I remember it in NT 4.0 - it may have been around earlier) which provides similar functionality. The Restart Manager (assuming it actually works, and isn't vapourware) checks:
- What running processes are using a particularly shared library.
- Whether they can be safely restarted without losing state.
As I posted above, it would be possible to add this functionality to UNIX quite easily (simply create a new signal that is ignored by default but causes a process to fork() and exec() a new, identical, copy of itself if it can be restarted without losing state), but it hasn't been.UNIX is a thirty year old OS design that won out against some much better designs because it was given away for free in an era when operating systems were expensive. Just because the current competitor is so much worse, don't assume your favourite toy OS has every possible useful feature. (Yes, I am bitter VMS lost).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Restart Manager
What a fancy name they've found for "Quit to DOS and restart Windows"
What will I do all day long now?
./ while their computers reboot?
that's what I'd do, but wait... don't you already read
This is just a repeat of what happened back in the 90's. Forgive me if I'm too lazy to look up which versions we are talking about.
...
Early versions of Windows would reboot when you sneezed at it. Anything you did required a reboot.
Then we heard the word out of Redmond. "The new, better Windows that is coming out will not require you to reboot so much. This will save loads of time."
And it worked. The new version didn't require rebooting as much as the old.
Then the next version required more rebooting and the the next even more. As Windows got more complex, whatever they did to make it reboot less didn't come into play as much.
So now
Now if they could only make it so I don't have to restart Firefox every time I install a new extension.
Oops, wrong company...
But seriously, why do people criticize Microsoft so much for requiring occasional reboots when a much simpler application, Firefox, requires a restart every time an extension is installed. It seems like a browser extension would be much easier to load on-the-fly than an update to a core part of an operating system, so why not harp on Firefox? Is it because it isn't a Microsoft product? There are plenty of threads in this story's comments bashing Microsoft, saying it's about time they got their act together regarding reboots, etc. But what if Mozilla suddenly announced Firefox 1.5.1 would be able to load extensions on-the-fly? Everyone would cheer for Firefox and sing praises of such an innovative new feature. This story just reminded me of the double standard regarding Microsoft and, well, everyone that isn't Microsoft.
This new Windows feature sounds cool and it doesn't. I don't really care about rebooting, to be honest. It takes 30 seconds of my time (big deal). Stop adding things like this to Vista and just get it done and shipped. I'm still not going to use Vista for moral (DRM) reasons, but still... there must be some people who want it done sooner rather than later.
-William Brendel
Well someone doesn't understand synergistic outside-of-the-box problem solving. The solution to any problem with any project is to add more managers. Or sometimes consultants, but having a Reboot Consultant would sound a bit odd (even if it would be a more apt desctiption).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Wanna bet Vista won't let you restart the WM and GUI without rebooting the whole machine?
Read the article. Apps that use the new Restart Manager API will save state when the window manager and GUI are about to be rebooted. Even if everything does need to be rebooted, you can click reboot, have a cup of (cough) "tea", and come back to find your apps in the same state as when you left them.
Windows 2000 didn't require reboots either. Microsoft claimed that they had made everything much better, and lots of people believed them.
As it turned out, the only reason people were observing that Windows 2000 rebooted less frequently, was because as the latest version of Windows, all of the latest DLL's were already online. Naturally, this meant that installing various applications did not require updating any system DLL's.
As time went on, of course, new software came out that bundled newer versions of those same DLL's, and slowly but surely the requisite reboots began to appear more and more frequently.
There is every reason to believe that Vista will be exactly the same.
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It probably won't happen anyways. With each Windows release, they claim "Less reboots!" and in reality, there's no less.
Who knows, maybe with a "Reboot Framework.NET ASP 1.2.3.4 Live 2006" or whatever the hell they called it, we might actually see less reboots. I doubt it though.
Plus, I don't really reboot that much. I leave my Windows workstations running for days, sometimes weeks. Windows XP is pretty stable as long as you're good enough to keep it running well - which is a chore, for sure. I mean, you need to be an experienced IT engineer. But it is stable under these conditions =)
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Whoa, whoa. The Vista implementation *sounds* better. It *might* be better. Let's not forget, Vista ain't here yet. It might be an entirely new nightmare for sysadmins everywhere. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here, there's always a chance MSFT might disappoint yet again.
Call em crazy, but I just updated KDE to 3.5, and had to reboot...
My tech blog
and then put another file in its place. I've done it numerous times manually.
I remember using the new beta of IRIX in 1990 (verion 5, I think) when I was an intern at SGI (then Silicon Graphics). Update anything live, including the kernel.
You do not want applications continuing to use the old version. That is the problem with most unix implementation. They continue to use old libs, and have security issues. Windows and macs just forces you to restart on the safe side.
Black Tuesday is my bread and butter, especially when MS releases a boatload. Patch, reboot, check the logs, svcs, etc. Restart IIS, occaisonally Exchange. Manually start BUE. Wrap it up and go on to the next server.
If MS didn't exist I'd have to invent them as my own personal revenue stabilisation scheme. That's why I never, ever, EVER tell my clients about Linux, or BSD, or OSX... [grin]
---
Remember, it's never too late to have a happy childhood!
Due to stricter regulations on what they regards ownership control :-#
....
End users do not need to reboot for Vista Update.
You will have TWO options:
1) buy a new computer
2) sent your computer up to Redmond and let them do the upgrade (at a small fee ofcource!
Pick your choise!
But you will not have to reboot for the upgrade, they state
You'll get your daily share of normal reboots during work after the upgrade ofcourse
I'm just playing around with a November build (5259) of Vista, and I just had to reboot VMWare for installing a mouse driver. :)
:)
Well maybe things will improve then, heh
It could be a beta 2 / post-beta 2 feature that's not checked in here yet, but I thought it was funny because I don't recall even XP doing that.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Vista will be just as bumpy a ride as XP was.
I agree. Even now most application can be installed without a restart. However since application are written windows corss platform, that means they should also install on win98/winme, the installer prompts for a restart at the end.
This is just because developers do not know how to replace dll's in flight, and installers are made as an after thought. Maybe some MS OS updates do not require a windows start (and the internet explorer is part of the OS), many thirth party application will still require this. FOr technical reason, or because the installer says so, or for your "holy reboot helpdesk procedure".
I have been hearing from MS evangelists for ever that the next version of Windows won't need to be reboot for any reason. Remember: "It's the best version to date!" Which is a euphemism for: "We didn't screw it up as bad as the last version!"
Seriously...who cares...for a new version of Windows at $$$$ it better do a whole hell-of-a-lot more than update without a reboot.
and X apps that use proper session management will do the same
The difference is that Microsoft will probably require proper session management in all programs that get a "Designed for Microsoft Windows Vista" logo.
or do they?!
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...as is rumored, it won't matter if you have to restart--who cares about restarts if it only takes 5 seconds to get back to a working screen?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Another fine example of "it doesn't matter how many problems get fixed, we'll be here to bitch about it anyway"
Well if we didn't bitch, they'd never fix it! So if they never fixed it, we'd have to bitch!
It's a vicious cycle...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
I wonder where they innovated that from?.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
well, by referring to init, i was gesturing towards unix in general, and being a linux user, /etc/init.d is the first thing that came to my mind.
i probably should have said rc anyway though considering i was talking about freebsd...
oh well. no one likes my post anyway
cd shower ; make clean ; cd
Maybe it should be called a Wizard instead?
-Z
Of course, if you feel that MAC OS-X is the platinum standard, you're entitled to your opinion (and I wouldn't argue ;^).
w0000t, you mean, like
kill -HUP
telinit 1
and all those old fashioned, sooo 1974 commands?
Hugo
Just be careful to click End Process rather than End Task...
"End Task" will send the app a request to terminate, which for annoying installers that give you only an "OK" at the end, will often cause them to reboot the system anyway.
"End Process" doesn't notify it first, just kill -9s it, so it won't be able to pull any crap like that.
Ahh, but you replied.
Generation Trance: What generation are you?
That wasn't a crash, it was just some "Office(TM) politics".
You're seriously comparing rebooting Firefox, a single user application to rebooting an entire OS? While I agree that having to reboot firefox every time you add an extension is stupid, it has no comparison whatsover to taking down an operating system.
Even if you're not talking about a server (which is a major major downtime problem) it's still annoying as hell to have to reboot my workstation and kill everything I currently have running every other time there's an update. The 3 seconds it takes to restart firefox (and only firefox) isn't really that big a deal.
AccountKiller
on the dec systems - you could reroute output to any device on the system - like the user across the room - and then you'd hear a yelp or see a finger rise up from that workstation or cubicle.. IIRC someone invented the "finger" command to stop us using PIP to raise someone's finger to see if they were at their station...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The way I drill this into both junior engineers and senior management is, "We don't have to do everything right the first time. We just have to make sure we don't prevent ourselves from doing it right later."
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
That's what I was referring to.
(Says he, posting from his Gentoo box while KDE 3.5 builds in a screen session:
$ uptime
15:36:21 up 7:24, 8 users, load average: 2.04, 2.14, 2.24)
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
'compontentization' is a perfectly cromulent word.
Reminds me of the driver for our HP G95 that wouldn't spontaneously exit on system shutdowns. It caused Windows to stall like forever before it finally decided to give up.
Not funny if some systems take eons for a reboot, especially if they run Windows. After I found out I replaced it with a plain PCL driver for all but the one user that needed the scanner functionality. It paid off in far less system crashes, too.
The Linux users were not much better off: they occasionally got garbled prints due to the hacked-together driver (IIRC HP didn't provide one). Red Hat had half a dozen choices of drivers but none was solid.
I can already see this coming... Less computer savvy friends telling me "Look how good the new Windows is! You dont even need to reboot after changes!" And then I'll be smacking their heads into nearby concrete repeatedly whilst screaming profanity mixed with '*nix has done this forever' type phrases.
15 years late!
'If a part of an application, or the operating system itself, needs to updated, the Installer will call the Restart Manager, which looks to see if it can clear that part of the system so that it can be updated. If it can do that, it does, and that happens without a reboot.'"
RESTART MANAGER: "An update to NOTEPAD.EXE has been downloaded to your computer. Windows can install this update without a reboot. In order to update this component, Windows must close all dependent applications. The following dependent component will be closed and then re-opened: "NT_OS_KERNEL.EXE". Your other applications and open documents will not be affected. Press OK to continue."
If the restart manager is the only reason for the use of Vista when you could have been using *nix for a while? Are there other benifits of Vista?
This is a good addition to windows i will say. It is a needed feature. :)
news at 11
Because you don't have separation between directory information and disk information (inodes v. directories) you can't pull the great tricks that UNIX uses (delete/overwrite a file while in use, for example, without the program using it freaking out).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Ya, I know! I thought they actually ment it! I mean, they must be new here!
Why, the French government is behind every design decision. Except they called it the Restart Manger, because it gobbled up so many system resources. Guess something got lost in translation.
Persistent state of applications after restart. hmmm... What a terrible idea! What if the app is messed up.
Then delete the session. I use at least one app that can persist unsaved changes to a document after a crash because it periodically backs up unsaved changes to a session file. If it finds such a session file when you start the program, it pops up an alert like this one:
It only makes sense that you have to restart the X apps after restarting the X Server.
Such an app does restart. The operating system saves a list of apps that should be restarted. Then each app saves your documents' unsaved changes to a session file and then loads those documents when the app restarts. This way you restart the OS, and you restart the apps, but the restart doesn't have to block on waiting for you to decide whether or not to save your documents.
Or are you scared of a corrupt session file?
Ever hear of a floating casino? When Windows Vista does away with all those reboots (see today's news), transient virii will become a reality. They will live until the next reboot. Months? A year or (gasp) maybe two ?
At Botnet Central they'll see members disappear as the reboots go by, and members join as new computers are infected. But on average, their floating botnet should do a great job of spam distribution, or whatever the currency of the day is.
On the bright side, only an as-yet unwritten super-feaky memory scanner could detect a transient virus on a running system - if it could at all. Even if it could detect "today's" transient virus, detecting tomorrow's may take months of work.
Well kids, back to the Nightly Reboot Routine - it'll be the only way to ensure your Windows Vista Virus Magnet isn't working while you're snoozin.
Final advice? Always choose the least popular operating system - or write your own.
- The Kessel run is for nerf herders. I can circumnavigate the entire Central Finite Curve in a lot less than 12 parse
This sounds like one of those features where you go, "oh, that will be a big improvement" and then when it actually comes time to take advantage of that feature it really doesn't work that well that often. I'm expecting to be disappointed.
Unfortunately the GUI doesn't seem to be a distinct part of Windows, like it is in Linux. Maybe Vista fixes that, but I'm not holding my breath.
Early versions of Windows NT ran graphics in user mode. Later versions of Windows NT (including Windows 2000 and Windows XP) moved graphics into the kernel (using a driver called win32k.sys) as a performance optimization when people were experiencing jittery mouse pointers under heavy load. But now, entry-level hardware is much more powerful than it was in the NT 3/4 days, and more importantly, computers tend to run in a globally networked environment, which is much less trustworthy than the lone box or LAN that was common before the mid-1990s. Thus the case for tight integration of win32k.sys is no longer as strong. In Windows Vista, DirectX 10 handles graphics (with GDI running on top of DirectX), and I'll take an educated guess that the equivalent to win32k.sys can be unloaded or has had a lot of functionality moved to user mode or both. I agree that we'll have to wait and see how this pans out.
You obviously dont know what you're talking about.
When a program under Unix is loaded and requires a library, that library is loaded in memory until the program no longer uses it. So if you do update a library on disk, as long your program is on memory it will use the library loaded on memory (the previous one) and won't use the newly installed once until it is restarted. New programs launched will use the new library.
when I was in a presentation by a M$ bussiness man... he was talking about the *new* and *futuristic* new look for next versions of windows... this was about 2 or 3 years ago... he was talking about translucid terminals and windows... I still haven't see those on windows yet, but while he was talking I had in my mind some gnometerminals moving around a windows desktop...
Are these guys ever going to actually create something new and stop announcing very old things as new innovations (not to mention when they invented symlinks... I still get a smile when I remember it)
From the article:
He also said he is cautiously optimistic that Microsoft would be able to get Restart Manager to do what they say it will if they "decide to take the time to do it right, with an emphasis on testing and quality assurance. But they must still overcome the inherent weaknesses on the Windows platform as related to file corruption, shared memory space, etc."
The article is basically what Microsoft would LIKE to do, but not what they are promising to do.
:wq
The one that exploits a flaw in the Restart Manager to constantly reboot your machine...
You KNOW it's going to happen...
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I stop and start the GUI on my linux box all the time. None of the users even notice.
They still get all their files via Samba, all their mail, and the website stays up.
Fuck off and die.
You obviously dont know what you're talking about.
When a program under Unix is loaded and requires a library, that library is loaded in memory until the program no longer uses it. So if you do update a library on disk, as long your program is on memory it will use the library loaded on memory (the previous one) and won't use the newly installed once until it is restarted. New programs launched will use the new library.
You obviously didn't pay attention to anything I said. I specifically said that's what Unix does, and that it has the potential for problems.
The problem comes down to shared resources. The issue occurs when an API stays the same but the implementation changes. Here's an example. You have two programs that communicate with each other through the use of an API in a shared library. The communication can be via a file on disk, shared memory, or whatever else you choose. The API is fine, but the implementation turns out to have a flaw. A new version of the shared library fixes the bug in the implementation. This fix maintains perfect binary compatibility, however, it means that the corrected library cannot safely communicate with the flawed library. This is a complete non-issue if you only replace libraries on disk if they are not in use. If you overwrite the library on disk while it's in use, you will get conflicts between the already running applications and the newly launched applications.
Is Windows ready for the Enterprise?
emt 377 emt 4
Tin foil aside I've often thought the simplest explanation for a lot of the phenomena we've seen (and that legendary "nsa" signature purported to have been buried in code) is that Microsoft has been hired by the government/military complex/fbicia etc. to ensure that its systems will always include enough holes, options, and mutually antagonistic mixtures of conflicting configurations, that computers can be spied on. Adding to this possibly unhealthy paranoia experience with spyware and spam, and some empirical knowledge from the newspapers of espionage by other governments (apparently France and China so they say), I have to admit this latest development sounds a bit scary. You can pretty much expect that within a year of it going on sale there will be at least one major security violation caused by invisible updating of core system components through a viral vector exploiting some known Windows vulnerability. I'd rather they worked on the security side before they started making it easier to quietly change windows. Of course if you do want to be paranoid this is such a new shiny toy for the microsoft team in the secret government branch of your choice. Oh look, shiny! Now we can stay a step ahead of all those antivirus, firewall, and security weenies! Well take your pick.. I'd rather not be forced into some invisible updating service that decides to add some more drm or whatever to my machine while I'm in bed.
Someone decides to install an upgraded build of Cardbox. Cardbox is an application program. It doesn't install or update any system DLLs.
There is no reason for a reboot but we often end up having to ask for one anyway. Why? Because something has opened cardbox3.exe, the main Cardbox program file, and is holding it open. No reason for this to happen. Cardbox isn't running so certainly it doesn't need it.
The HANDLE utilities claim that Windows Explorer is holding cardbox3.exe open. Why? What for? No-one knows. As an expert user I am able to crash explorer.exe by hand, then do the installation, then restart explorer.exe again. But you can hardly expect a rational Real User to do that. [And sometimes HANDLE reports that Microsoft Word is the culprit instead of Explorer. Why? What for? No-one knows].
If Windows Vista seriously gets round the problem them I will be grateful and so will my users be. But I don't believe it. I suspect that they won't be able to do more than stick another layer of palliative software on top of the defect.
And as for the number of users running Mac OS X, I currently put that around 17 million mark. Here's where I got those numbers from.
Start from a base of 9,000,000+ users as per this January 6th 2004 article:
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/06macosx
Then add the number of Macintosh Units sold since then per quarter. Each had a copy of OSX on it:
2004
Q1: 829,000
Q2: 749,000
Q3: 876,000
Q4: 836,000
2005
Q1: 1,046,000
Q2: 1,070,000
Q3: 1,182,000
Q4: 1,236,000
So, 9000000+829000+749000+876000+836000+1046000+10700
If you honestly thing that Sun or any of the other BSD's can boast a user base that size, I reckon you're smoking something dodgy. I'm not even sure the Linux installed base is that big as 90% of Linux installs are likely to be small servers, not desktops.
Usually, if you are borrowing an idea, you would write: "Now our system has XYZ feature that the other guy's have". But, no, what they do is say that they've added this feature, giving the impression that they've invented it.
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