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.'"

Comments

funny department

[pohl]

"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?

Re:funny department

[theantipop]

Maybe it's sarcasm? No, that's unpossible Slashdot is to regard all matters with the utmost of seriousness.

Re:funny department

[zulux]

What's with the kid that always crosses the finish line last and somehow always gets perceived as the leader?

Maby the last kid that crossed gets all the attention because he's "special." ...

It's the same way when I show people Windows Remote Desktop.... they act like it's a big deal.

Unix had "remote destop technology" before most Unix users could afford computer monitors.

And even then, Unix was late to the party many times - I've been put in my place by old geezers when they say... "Well, my PDP-8 did that too. With punch-cards."

Re:funny department

[kuzb]

I dub the parent comment "Welcome to the flame of today". This isn't about unix, nor is it about competing with Unix. This is about fixing a long-standing user complaint. Why must there always be a comparison? Another fine example of "it doesn't matter how many problems get fixed, we'll be here to bitch about it anyway"

Re:funny department

[MSFanBoi2]

Look, we ain't talking about Unix or Linux here, we are talking about Windows.

Windows wasn't able to do this before, now it is.

What with the kid that keeps thinking that Windows and UNIX are the same and features in each have to mirror each other.

Re:funny department

[MightyMartian]

The point, other than a bit of chest beating, is to demonstrate that Microsoft loves to ooze BS about innovation, but when you look at what they do, it's been around for a long bloody time./

Re:funny department

[Anonymous Coward]

What's with the kid that always crosses the finish line last and somehow always gets perceived as the leader?

Why does every topic have to come down to politics and the Bush administration?

Re:funny department

[dslbrian]

This is about fixing a long-standing user complaint. Why must there always be a comparison?

Probably because "long-standing" doesn't really do it justice. The problem has existed in all Windows versions up to and including the ones that exist today. The comparison is because Unix and variants overcame the problem what, years? decades? ago. Imagine them saying that Vista is going to patch a 20year hole in IE, most people would compare to alternatives and say wtf took them so long...

Re:funny department

[chris_mahan]

Ah yes, the Dreaded Remote Punch Cards.

Re:funny department

[dtfinch]

"In a small way, Windows NT is a Unix." -Bill Gates

Re:funny department

[edwdig]

Except the Vista implementation is better.

Unix systems gladly replace system libraries that are in use, and just hope that not problems happen because two different versions of the same library are in use simultaneously. The further away from the core libraries you get, the lower the odds of a problem, but it's still a risk. The Unix approach is basically "Let's just go ahead and do it, it'll probably be ok."

Windows takes the safe approach of only updating libraries that are not in use. I'm sure you'd wind up with weird glitches if your apps were using multiple versions of GDI simultaneously. The Windows approach is "It may be ok to update this now, or it may not. Just to be safe, let's not update it until we can guarentee it's safe."

The Vista implementation is going to try to free up libraries, and if it can, will then update them in place. If not, you'll still have to reboot.

Re:funny department

[IAmTheDave]

More to the point, it's not even that relevant. MS can install updates without reboots too, like the latest .NET Framework 1.1 update for instance, which unlike the original install of the framework, didn't require a reboot on my PC. Heck, Windows Update often runs without rebooting.

Read the fine print:

...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.

And if it CAN'T clear that part of the system? <mentok voice>REBOOT!</mentok voice>

So, I'm not sure how this is much different than before, aside from Vista will try to unload unused system dlls as well as non-system dlls?

Re:funny department

[TheRaven64]

This could probably be done by adding a signal to UNIX. When a process receives SIGUPDATE it ignores it by default. If it can quit and relaunch preserving state, then it relaunches itself (fork(), then exit and the child process exec()s the original binary with the original launch options and any required state. The install manager would run through all processes, run ldd on all of them, and if they were using a library that was about to be updated send them SIGUPDATE (after the update, since you can do an in-place replacement of files on a UNIX system). If any of the processes still has the same pid as before the update (i.e. it didn't restart) then the installer tells the user to restart that process manually.

Re:funny department

[Zathrus]

q[More like welcome to unix of yesteryear.]q

Really? Your Unix installations save the current environment when they need a reboot (for, oh say, a kernel update) and restore it completely when finished?

What this appears to do is considerably more than just try to avoid reboots (which, while improved under XP, still happen way too damn much -- for both OS and "application" patches), it actually tries to make a reboot a non-event as far as the user is concerned.

It won't work though. There's too many potential issues -- most of them security related. If you're logged in on a network it would have to remember your login info to restore that. What if you're logged into remote connections, like ssh sessions? Or ftp? Or your web banking? While these might be solvable, my guess is that solving some of them (like retaining the SSL session for the web banking) would involve some pretty massive potential security holes beyond just remembering passwords that it shouldn't.

Fixing the real issues would require a massive rewrite of the file systems, the memory manager (esp. virtual memory), and other key OS components. Unix has done it right for a long time in this regard -- delete a file in use? Sure, no problem. But it's not actually de-allocated from the FS until the current process releases it. This has its own set of issues, but they're much more managable than the ones that exist with Windows' current methods. Better yet would be inherent versioning, ala VMS's FS. Certainly disk space is cheap now compared to back then -- it's surprising that nobody's revisited this.

Re:funny department

[pebs]

It's the same way when I show people Windows Remote Desktop.... they act like it's a big deal.
Unix had "remote destop technology" before most Unix users could afford computer monitors.

Are they amazed by it because its a remote desktop or its so fast its like using the machine locally, even with a low bandwidth connection? Remote desktop technology has been around for ages, but what's amazing about RDC is its speed. NoMachine NX is comparable in speed. But take straight X remoting or VNC and they are laughably slow in comparison.

Re:funny department

[ZakMcCracken]

Yes, well, with today's Unix infrastructure you can do remote server access, but can you do remote *desktop* access?

Sure you can adapt server tools like X11 to do remote access, but then remote desktop involves more: can you see your local hard drive from the applications on the desktop machine that you're remoting into? Can you see your local printer, so the printouts come where you are by default and not on the printer that is connected to the remote PC? Can you hear sounds played by applications when you remote into a PC?

Same thing with fast user switching... many people said, on Linux you have long been able to open many virtual consoles under different identities... Just Ctrl+Fn between them... Ah yes but what happens when you switch consoles? Notice how it doesn't ask for your password? Which makes it applicable in many settings, contrary to the Mac or Windows versions of fast user switching which do ask for password. Feature comes in late, but right.

As to changing OS components while running... Sure, Linux has had kernel modules, FreeBSD has had a microkernel... but is there a tool to automate dependency checking, to see which services need to be shut down, to actually shut them down / unload modules, and then relaunch services?

Unix OS's "can do" a lot of things, if you accept that many of the capabilities are pushed out of the OS onto the end-user. Actually if you start thinking this way, coding pure assembly in kernel mode actually has the most features!!

Re:funny department

[NotoriousQ]

Except this already happens anyway. When a library is replaced the original is deleted, but the content still hangs around until all programs that rely on that library close, at which point the file system deletes the content.

All programs that start after library has been updated use the updated version.

The main issue is that in windows, two files can not exist under the same name (no concept of linking). (well, sort of. I am not sure if NTFS streams can be used for this.)

Re:funny department

[zulux]

but is there a tool to automate dependency checking, to see which services need to be shut down, to actually shut them down / unload modules, and then relaunch services?

No need for that in a proper system.

Let's say I want to upgrade Samba: In Unix, while the system is running, I upgrade the binaries right over the old versions. Unix is smart enough to keep the old version around and all clients that are in use continue to work just.

Any new client gets the new version.

As old sessions drop off over the next few weeks they get the new version when the reconnect. When the last old session dies, then you're fully migrated and none of the users ever noticed.

No need for "automared dependence checking" when your system was designed properly in the first place.

Re:funny department

[oGMo]

Unix systems gladly replace system libraries that are in use

Define "in use". If it's a program that's currently running and using it, no it doesn't. Even if the old library gets unlinked (deleted) it doesn't go away until the last process using it has exited. New libraries are named by their version (foo.so.X.Y.Z). Old ones go on living and things that are using them keep on using them.

Even programs that depend on older major versions of the library can coexist without anything special; minor versions are assumed to be binary compatible (and should be), but even if not you can manually specify which library to link if it comes down to that (like, if you broke the box and you need to rebuild it without rebooting).

Re:funny department

[man_of_mr_e]

Weeks? The idea behind an in-place patch is because of some security flaw. You don't want the old version hanging around for weeks. If there's a security vulnerability, I want to restart ALL of the services that use it immediately.

Re:funny department

[pikine]

This is essentially what Unix does, but not many people understand this.

What happens when you upgrade a package?

1. Package manager removes the files of the old package.
2. Package manager unpacks files from a new package.
3. Repeat until all packages are upgraded.

When an opened file is removed from the file system, its directory entry is removed, but the inode stays on disk as long as the file stays open. So old libraries remain on disk as long as old programs are using them, which essentially creates a parallel world of different library versions---one accessible from the file system, and the other accessible from existing running programs with open file descriptors. When the program restarts, it then uses the new library.

Re:funny department

[That's Unpossible!]

I will never regard all matters with the utmost seriousness.

Sincerely,

That's Unpossible!

Re:funny department

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Same here...

But on mine, I have a well preserved sound effect of a thumb flipping across the edge of a stack of cards.

Re:funny department

[zulux]

Weeks? The idea behind an in-place patch is because of some security flaw. You don't want the old version hanging around for weeks. If there's a security vulnerability, I want to restart ALL of the services that use it immediately.

For most purpouses - you can sometimes assume that the curent useres of your service are not malicious. New ones coming online could be malicious because they have access to security exploit. This is a decision for the human to make and not the OS. If I feel that the security vulnerability has been in the wild for too long - I will kill all the old processes that are attached to old clients.

When sshd had a vulnerability - I updated it and left the old connections online as they were all started before the exploit became known. When there was a vulnerability in PHP, I killed everybody because I wasen't sure, and our PHP app wasen't critical - it woulden't hurt anybody to drop them.

This is somthing that MS should allow the administrator to decide and not try to "help"

Re:funny department

[Tim C]

When a library is replaced the original is deleted, but the content still hangs around until all programs that rely on that library close, at which point the file system deletes the content.

Not quite - it's more general than that. When a file that an application has open is deleted, the link to it is removed (so you can't see it any more, nothing else can access it, etc) but the data is left in place and any file handles remain valid. Once the last handle to it is closed, then the inodes are marked as being free.

That's the case for *any* file, be it a library, an mp3, a text file, etc.

For what it's worth, I can see situations in which replacing a library that's in use could be problematic. If you start another instance of the app that's using it, for example, and the library that's changed defines a communications protocol, then you may well have problems if the two instances try to communicate. That may be relatively ok if it's an instant message system, but not so good if it's something more critical like an RDBMS. Not likely, perhaps, but not impossible.

The main issue is that in windows, two files can not exist under the same name (no concept of linking).

The same is true of Linux. In the case of deleting a file that's in use and replacing it with a new copy, there are not two files with the same name. There is one file with the name, and an area of data that is no longer linked to. That area of data *used* to have that name, but doesn't any longer.

When deleting a file that's in use, an OS has three options:

1. Delete it anyway and damn the consequences
2. Delete it but keep the data available for the application(s) using it (the Linux way)
3. Prevent deletion of the file (the Windows way)

Note that 3 isn't the only way it works under Windows, it depends how the file was opened. For example, WMP is perfectly happy to allow you to delete media files while you're playing them, notepad is fine with text files disappearing out from under it, etc.

Re:funny department

[Taladar]

Actually Linux does care whats on disk, it just doesn't care about the name in the filesystem tables, just the file itself, which means you can delete or reuse the name while the file is used.

Re:funny department

[dslbrian]

don't you think Apple (one of the, if not *the* biggest Unix distro)

Heh, ok I almost laughed at that. If you seriously think Apple is the biggest Unix distro, you have a seriously myopic view of the Unix world. Of course perhaps you were referring to *BSD (encompassing all derivatives) instead of "Apple".

Sure it might be theoretically possible in some lab setting, but the simple fact of the matter is that the Unix distribution I use every day doesn't, and so it can't be nearly as simple to accomplish as you seem to assume it is.

I'm not a kernel programmer (I have written drivers however), but I imagine it all has to do with the modularity of the kernel and subsystems. On the HPUX and Linux boxes I use daily, and also the Sun boxes I used to use, restarting core services - NFS, automount, etc. never required a reboot. Shutdown and restart the process and your good to go. Adding applications and libraries on said systems hasn't required rebooting either. I've installed major application suites (Cadence, Mentor Graphics), X, major libraries (perl, java, etc), cups print services, and so on - none of which required a reboot. Even something as invasive as swapping the video drivers can be done without a reboot. Exit X (or init 3), adjust startup script, restart X - all done.

On the flip side however is Windows, where when I installed my HP "plug-and-play" printer, it required rebooting -halfway- through the driver installation, and then again(!) after the drivers were fully installed. As near as I can tell everytime some stupid little app or game tries to install a dll it requires a reboot. The drivers for my digital camera and scanner were the same way. Why the heck do you have to reboot the whole machine to install a usb driver is beyond me. Perhaps its the peripheral manufacturer writing bad drivers, mabye its Windows, heck if I know, but thats the way it is.

Re:funny department

[Jesus_666]

Actually, it doesn't reboot. Updating is completely reboot-less. If something can't be rebooted the system just switches into Windows 95 Special Compatibility Mode, ie. it bluescreens. You can also turn on the Advanced Administrator Mode, in which case the system will attempt to overwrite the associated files until it gets an error and then bluescreens. The "Advanced Administrator" part refers to the fact that you have to be an MCSE to get the system back into a working state afterwards.

Linux kernel hackers have announced that they will get this feature out before the launch of Windows Vista. The Linux implementation will be called Automated Self-Trashing; the first alpha versions are already out, but so far it only works on IA-64 and SPARC.

Apple has announced that they are too cool for this and instead released HFS++, a file system that stores all files randomly splattered across "forks", "spoons" and "knives", which will make system recovery useless as no one can tell whether a particular piece of data is a filename, a QuickTime movie or the boot sector. This technology, also called Au Revoir, will make it easier than ever to trash sensitive data.

Hurd developers have simply pointed out that non-functionality is the default state of their operating system.

Re:funny department

[mrdaveb]

When there was a vulnerability in PHP, I killed everybody because I wasen't sure

Isn't that a bit drastic?

Re:funny department

[Pneuma ROCKS]

That's Unpossible!

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Re:funny department

[dillee1]

>can you see your local hard drive from the applications on the desktop machine that you're remoting into?
mount nfs/smbfs/cifs

>Can you see your local printer
cups

>Can you hear sounds played by applications when you remote into a PC?
network sound daemon/arts/esound

>Same thing with fast user switching...
In *nix, you just x/vnc/nx and open a few GUI desktop AT THE SAME TIME.
Fuck user switching.

>As to changing OS components while running... Sure, Linux has had kernel modules, FreeBSD has had a microkernel... but is there a tool to automate dependency checking, to see which services need to be shut down, to actually shut them down / unload modules, and then relaunch services?
modprobe does automatically load LKM.
FreeBSD is not microkernel.
most init script are written to auto load modules, start dependencies.

No Reboot

[faqmaster]

There is no reboot, just a breif BSOD, then you're back at teh login screen.

Wow... Took only 30 years to catch up...

[scheming daemons]

.. with *nix.

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.

Re:Wow... Took only 30 years to catch up...

[joshv]

Not being able to kill services in not a limitation of windows, it's a limitation of the task manager. Use Sysinternal's Process Explorer - it will let you kill any process, even if doing so will crash windows.

Re:Wow... Took only 30 years to catch up...

[cnelzie]

What planet are you from? World of Yesteryearland?

    There's tons of GUI applications to shutdown and restart services on UNIX these days. Plus, some package managers are smart enough to shutdown a service, apply the updated files, copy over the settings, if some configuration files have been altered and then restart the service.

    ALL FROM A GUI!

    Again, welcome to the world of the future Mr. MS Apologist.

Re:Wow... Took only 30 years to catch up...

[Wesley55221]

yet another Microsoft "innovation" that is decades behind the competition.

And the manner in which they claim to "solve" this really gets me nervous:

"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 basically it reboots, and then restarts your applications? Sounds to me like they're making things worse.

Re:Wow... Took only 30 years to catch up...

[flyinwhitey]

"Data Recovery and Application Restart

With Windows Vista, users won't have to restart their computers for most updates and application installations. Windows Vista knows which applications and services are using which files, and if a file needs to be updated, Windows Vista can coordinate saving the application's data, closing the application or stopping the service, updating the file, and automatically reopening the application or restarting the service. This capability is provided by a feature called Restart Manager.

Restart Manager works with Microsoft Update, Windows Update, Microsoft Windows Server Update Services, Microsoft Software Installer, and Microsoft Systems Management Server to detect processes that have files in use and to gracefully stop and restart services without the need to restart the entire machine. Applications that are written to take advantage of the new Restart Manager features can be restarted and restored to the same state and with the same data as before the restart."

Show me anywhere in there where MS claims this is an innovation.

Your inferiority complex is showing.

Fixing DLL management... what a novel concept

[KiltedKnight]

I guess now the D really will stand for Dynamic.

Part of the problem has always been that their DLL manager couldn't clean itself up without a reboot.

Re:Fixing DLL management... what a novel concept

[Krach42]

The windows DLL manager has been able to clean up after itself. The problem was that until Vista, everything has been tied in tight together, with a lot of integration between components, so it was difficult if not impossible to tell what could be restarted, and avoid the reboot.

Vista now uses much better compontentization, and this allows them to actually know what components were affected by an upgrade, and need to be restarted.

In the *nix world, everything's been compontentized from the start, and so naturally you were able to restart services instead of the whole machine fro mthe beginning.

Re:Fixing DLL management... what a novel concept

[jafac]

Vista now uses much better compontentization, and this allows them to actually know what components were affected by an upgrade, and need to be restarted.

. . . that is, until the application vendors (including Microsoft's own developers) get ahold of the system.

Linux

[phulshof]

Damn! We should copy this feature into Linux! oh, wait....

Re:Linux

[jonesy16]

The slashdot crowd once again rears its ugly "i'm a linux zealot so I'll say anything against windows and for linux even if it's not true" head. I'm a regular user of both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux. BOTH operating systems support killing and restarting MOST services without taking down the entire computer, as well as OSX. BOTH operating systems will let you dynamically load and unload hardware drivers without a reboot. BOTH operating systems will allow you to change your network configuration without requiring a reboot. BOTH operating systems require a reboot for kernel modifications. Windows requires a reboot for core DLL files since it doesn't have a runlevel 3 to drop back to like Linux does. But for all intensive purposes, if I have to shut down all services as well as X-windows, I'm not that close to being any better off. As other users have pointed out, don't blame Microsoft for the software maker's innability to report when a reboot is actually required or not. Linux never tells you when you "should" reboot unless you've installed a new kernel, it just blindly assumes you're ok, when sometimes you are not. This was also pointed out for OSX, whose update manager usually suggests a reboot even though the OS is capable of surviving without it. I can also tell you from personal experience that you can offer to "reboot later" and continue using the newly installed software with no problem most of the time. The difference in these approaches is that when grandma and grandpa install something and windows doesn't reboot for them and a conflict arises, they're left with a blue screen of death and can't understand what happened. When a linux user updates but doesn't restart X, and then applications start hanging, he/she knows, "oh, guess I just have to restart, that was my fault." When the general public isn't well educated and is using your software, you just do what's safest for them.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

"But for all intensive purposes, if I have to shut down all services as well as X-windows, I'm not that close to being any better off."

What intensive purposes?

Or did you mean intents and purposes?

Re:Linux

[misleb]

This isn't exactly true. Windows does have significant limitations on replacing files which are in use. In some cases you simply cannot do an in place upgrade. A reboot is required in Windows not because you can't restart processes, but because you can't replace files while they are in use. Sorry, but Windows and LInux are simply not on the same level here. Linux is, in fact, inherently easier (and safer) to upgrade without a reboot.

Obviously it is always safest to just reboot, but sometimes that is not the most optimal situation. If I am running a mission critical server and need some uber-important update, I don't want to have to reboot just to implement it. I want the option of updating without a reboot. This isn't just about desktop computers, you know. Well, maybe it is for Microsoft....

-matthew

hmm

[orbit86]

what they forget to mention is you have to stand on one leg and hold a metal rod while a thunderstorm is occuring..

The question

[ScottSCY]

I think it still might be a better idea to reboot to linux and go from there :-)

As an IT Employee...

[ehaggis]

What will I do all day long now?

Re:As an IT Employee...

[SimReg]

Same thing you do now - read and post to Slashdot!

hmmm

[ajdowntown]

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...

Re:hmmm

[dotgain]

Exactly. Will any exiting installers call the restart mis-manager? Probably not, because they don't know about it. You'll probably still get msgboxes telling you you must restart, with a single "OK" button on it, and not be able to click anywhere else. And of course there's the case of the restart mis-manager thinking it's clear to restart a service, when it isn't.

Re:hmmm

[Bezben]

The real question is how long will it take virus writers to use it to replace system dlls with new infected ones?

Ready for the desktop

[cactux]

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 !"

Re:Ready for the desktop

[SilentChris]

Considering most people turn off their computers every night, this feature wasn't really needed. If you ask the average Mom/teenager/grandparent, they turn off their machine every night. When asked why, they say "Why not?" The concept of having a machine running for months on end doesn't appeal to them at all.

Microsoft took their time with this because they could. Whereas, with Windows XP going forward, they've emphasized startup times -- because that's what Joe User looks at.

Finally..

[yamcha666]

Finally! How long have we been waiting for something like this in a Windows system? Granted, UNIX/Linux/etc has had it forever and I love it that I don't have to reboot every time I install, for example, a cd burner app in Linux. So why should I have to reboot when I install something like Nero? Or anything besides the kernel or hardware for that matter?

Linux: Because rebooting is for adding hardware.

Re:Finally..

[dotgain]

So why should I have to reboot when I install something like Nero? Or anything besides the kernel or hardware for that matter?

Having worked with several Windows developers (the worst of the pseudo-techies), I couldn't begin to tell you how dearly they hold their restarts and drive defrags.

Ever single installer would restart the computer, no matter how trivial the package installed is, even if it's just a bunch of PDFs. I've argued till I'm blue in the face with someone who insisted that you really need to restart to register all the files you copy on, DLLs or not.

Then there's defragging. Not only would all the devs defrag their own drives every week, they'd pretend they could notice a difference. It's the first thing our helpdesk would tell you to do if there were problems. Second, reinstall the OS.

Why do you have to reboot when you install something as simple as Nero? Two reasons. In my experience, Windows devs are pseudo-technical. They know a there's 1024 b's in a k, but not why. Second reason, that's what they're used to. They probably had to restart a half dozen times to install their click-and-drool development environment, and it becomes par for the course.

AND, because you actually FIX 50% of windows problems by restarting, why not? Mark my words, Vista will be just as bumpy a ride as XP was. You'll be restarting it often enough, matey.

Re:Finally..

[Tim Browse]

In my experience, Windows devs are pseudo-technical. They know a there's 1024 b's in a k, but not why.

In my experience, Linux devs are smug geeks who think they're hardcore because they build the apps they use from the source. The last Linux dev I worked with was a goddamn fucking incompetent muppet*. What's your point?

There are idiots in every profession. I've worked with lots of Windows devs, and I've never met one who loved 'their restarts and drive defrags'.

Btw:

Why do you have to reboot when you install something as simple as Nero?

Nero is probably a bad example - it talks to hardware in a way that most apps don't. But come to think of it, I don't think I had to reboot the last time I installed Nero.

And as for 'every single installer would restart the computer', I'll grant you that some installers insist on a restart for seemingly arbitrary reasons, but 'every single' one? Not even close.

If you're going to rag on Windows installers, complain about something valid, like the fact that many of them seem to think that installing the software is the most important thing you will ever do and so cover the screen with a full screen window (if you're unlucky, with the BGBG), and try to prevent you using your system while it's doing something as radical as making a new directory and copying some files into it (oh noes!)

* Sorry, still angry about that fucking over-confident smug arrogant twat of a know-nothing ham-fisted couldn't program or design a database schema his way out of a wet paper bag if his fucking life depended on it shithead, whose 4 months of work I had to throw away and rewrote in 3 weeks to a much higher standard, including the time taken to learn the web framework that he was supposedly expert in. But it's ok, the nurse says I'm making progress.

So now I only have to reboot once....

[Kaptain Kruton]

to go into safe mode and uninstall the damage done by the update.

Oh, Lordy!

[overshoot]

From the description it sounds complicated as all get out. Doing dependency checks in real time while the system is running, unlinking in-use libraries, etc.

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?

Re:Oh, Lordy!

[nick8325]

IIRC, NT can quite happily delete open files. The problem is that the Win32 DeleteFile function tries to open the file with exclusive access when it deletes it - so that will fail if anyone else is using it. I have no idea why it does that...

This post explains more.

Re:Oh, Lordy!

[mcrbids]

From the description it sounds complicated as all get out. Doing dependency checks in real time while the system is running, unlinking in-use libraries, etc.

This is the result of a (now decades old) decision waaaayyy back in the DOS days. DOS, as you may well know, was originally very much a single-user, single-tasking O/S. Many have said that it doesn't even qualify as an "Operating System" and was really little more than an interrupt handler. Whatever. Call it whatever you will, A rose by any other name is still a turd. (ahem)

Anyhow, they ran into a problem when introducing DOS to network situations. What happens when you have two people trying to edit the same file? What do you do to keep things in a consistent state?

The *nix way is to allow it, and fork the file writes. Thus, a file remains in its original form as long as a program is accessing it, and if the file is overwritten by another process, there are two copies of the same file. This lets you do an update on a busy, heavily loaded system with dozens of users without interrupting things. Users still using the old copy of the program will continue using the old program until the process quits, and users newly accessing the program get the new one.

But Microsoft's solution was to lock the file, so that if user A was accessing the file, and user B tried to access it, they were given a low-level permission denied error. This decision was most likely made because it was a quick hack, and easily written.

When DOS went "multi-user" with Windows, for retro-compatability, the same behavior was used for interprocess file accesses. And, when the NT codebase was brought in, for retro-compatability with Windows, and all of its applications, as well as DOS, the same behavior was followed.

So today, we have an Operating System vendor trying to market their product as "Enterprise Ready" that's severely hampered by a quick hack and a poor design decision made some 20 years earlier.

Think about the incredible contortions Microsoft has to go through in order to introduce this feature of being able to restart services and DLLs because of this stupid decision made back in the early 1980s! Just unimaginable complexity so that perhaps a hundred man-hours of programmer time could be saved back in 1983! And that cost rises exponentially every year, now probably costing Microsoft in the tens of thousands of man-hours today. The cost of "fixing" this would be incredible - it's now pretty much a permenant fixture...

Really, I think this is a very interesting perspective on the often permanent nature of decisions... they often last WAAAYYY longer than you ever think, and certainly well past the original scope of the decision! Keep this in mind next time you get started on a project!

I take from this two lessons:

1) Try, very, very hard, when a project is young, to consider the ramifications of decisions, and try to anticipate where the project will likely go in the future when it "grows up".

2) As soon as you realized that you've made a mistake, as soon as you've realized that you've mistakenly built in an inherent limitation, don't hesitate to go thru the pain it takes to make it right. No matter how expensive it might be today, it will be far, far more expensive to fix it in the future, and will cost you in reduced performance and suitability every single day.

How much of the anti-MS sentiment so prevalent today among the tech community would be here if MS had just eaten the pain, and paid the price it takes to make a truly high-quality product early on?

An integral part...

[zecg]

...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!

How innovative

[kindafun]

They should win an award or something.

If it's New...

[sycodon]

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?

Re:Lets get it out of the way right now....

[prockcore]

How is this new, my {Unix| Mac| Linux} system has done this for years

Your mac most definitely has not done this for years. Even updating Safari requires a reboot on OSX. My mac can't go a week without Software Update asking for a reboot.

Oh, UNIX has had "Restart...

[cnelzie]

...Managers" for a very long time. They are usually hairy, sometimes suffer from poor hygeine or halitosis or stinky feat syndrome. Sometimes they are cranky and short-tempered, but fill them with enough pizza, Mountain Dew and Coffee and they usually work things right.

    They are typically called System Administrators.

Re:Lets get it out of the way right now....

[neuroklinik]

Your mac most definitely has not done this for years. Even updating Safari requires a reboot on OSX. My mac can't go a week without Software Update asking for a reboot.

This is really just a sign of poorly composed installers. Apple's PackageMaker tools allow the installer to require a restart. However, it's trivial to extract a package's components by hand, unlink any in use kexts or halt any processes with open files that need to be updated, and place the new files from the package where the belong. Then you can restart the updated kexts and launch the updated processes yourself. No restart required. Apple's installer just tries to keep things simple for Joe Average User, and that means running the install, and then restarting to shutdown processes and clean up.

If your an uptime junky, just do it all by hand.

Microsoft acts like a kid.

[windowpain]

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."

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[Namronorman]

As much as we'd like some software companies to just update our current products it's unlikely that it'll happen. For you see, giving updates for free is not where the money is at, especially when you have an astronomical user base.

It's that way with a lot of things, for example I have a Wireless card that was sold AFTER the release of WPA but its drivers were never updated to work with WPA because they decided to abandon a perfectly fine card. If you contact the company they'll admit it no problem, they know they can get away with it and make even more money by doing something else.

For a lot of companies money comes before security. Unfortunately, thanks to a large ignorant user base (not everyone, but the majority), this is a perfectly fine business model for them.

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[delcielo]

While I agree that they should make it more stable in the first place, I have to say that this little piece is going to be a welcome feature.

I have often felt honestly bad for my Windows counterparts when it comes to patch time and they have to go through the pain of arranging down times and outages with their customers, sometimes stretching their patch time frame out for weeks.

While it's a long way from curing all of their ills, this is a welcome step.

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[glesga_kiss]

I wish the hell they would just make the the damned thing more stable in the first place.

Windows XP is stable. It's the third-party device drivers that cause the vast majority of the problems. Seriously, get the drivers right and the box will stay up as long as any Linux box. I've got an old PC as a media player, it's got hardly any cruft on it and it's rock solid. I'd quote the uptime, but it's low at the moment due to me doing some electrical work in my flat recently. The only thing that forces a reboot is the odd Windows Update, which is sounds like they've now sorted. Nice. Uptime is stability.

Once the makers of the thousand hardware devices start bundling close-sourced drivers for Linux, you'll see the exact same problems there. I mention closed-source specifically, as the ones that provide OSS drivers "get it" and will have theirs fixed for them as and when required.

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[Darius Jedburgh]

I'm guessing you don't use MS products and are just talking out of your ass. I haven't seen a serious crash from a Windows box (either at home or for 4 years at work) since about 2001 apart from driver problems clearly caused by NVidia. I've had things like the desktop lock up on me but killing and restarting explorer.exe with the task manager seems to cure that. Meanwhile I now work at a Linux based company and have rebooted on a regular basis. Of course this isn't in line with /. groupthink so I'll be immediately modded into oblivion.

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[quakeroatz]

Not sure what stability problems you're talking about with XP. The only crashes I have are related to dying hard drives, overheating, overclocking or using an older video drivers on new 3d apps/games. All of these factors having little to do with microsoft. Windows XP is stable. Vista? We'll see....

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[WuphonsReach]

That's been my experience as well.

Stability is one of the main reasons that I ran OS/2 2.0 through 3.0 back in the mid-late 90s. My OS/2 box would stay up and running for ~2 weeks at a time, as opposed to the non-stability of Win 3.1 and Win95. (I would dual-boot to Win95 to run a few games, but that was it.)

NT4 wasn't bad. I ran that for a few years before Win2000 came out. Win2000 was nicer because more things would run (Win2K server seemed to be more stable then NT4). Never had many issues with Win2K that couldn't be traced back to sub-par device drivers or non-system cruft (or flaky hardware). Since WinXP is built on Win2K's codebase, my experience really hasn't changed in a long time.

I have 2 WinXP desktop systems and a WinXP laptop. Uptime for me is generally measured in weeks. My restarts are mostly due to power outages, patches, or software installs. Or, every so often, the laptop will work itself into a frenzy and need to be restarted after 2-3 weeks. The game PC restarts a bit more frequently, mostly due to funky PC games.

More stability is naturally a good thing, but we're pretty much at the "good enough" stage. Now if we can just get Microsoft to point fingers at the folks who write shoddy device drivers. (By that, I mean better post-crash diagnostics that do a better job of informing the end-user about why the system crashed.)

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[schmiddy]

I haven't seen a serious crash from a Windows box

This is believable. Windows has gotten a lot more stable with 2K/XP.

I've had things like the desktop lock up on me but killing and restarting explorer.exe with the task manager seems to cure that.

I've found that a lot of times in 2k/XP , if explorer starts chewing through memory due to a leak somewhere, using the task manager to kill and restart explorer.exe usually only provides a temporary fix, with the system becoming unstable again soon.

Meanwhile I now work at a Linux based company and have rebooted on a regular basis.

I find this a bit surprising, and kind of hard to believe given the lack of specifics. The great thing about linux is that, even when you have a run-away process chewing through memory, you can always kill -9 it and it will go away, even if that process is X-Windows/KDE/something big. As compared to Windows, where you can end task a process many times before it decides it will finally exit.

There's not as much groupthink here as you might believe. I happen to think that Linux is, overall, a lot more stable than its counterpart based on my own experience -- I couldn't care less what position the zealots here supports.

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[killjoe]

"I haven't seen a serious crash from a Windows box (either at home or for 4 years at work) since about 2001 apart from driver problems clearly caused by NVidia."

I don't know what you mean by a "serious crash" but both my windows 2000 machine and XP machine crash pretty regularly. Not twice a day like windows 9x did but at least twice a week.

I suspect you are not really doing anything serious with your machine if your windows hasn't crashed in four years. In fact I doubt you are even using it if your windows hasn't crashed in four years.

"Of course this isn't in line with /. groupthink so I'll be immediately modded into oblivion."

If you get modded down I suspect it will be because nobody believes you and your statements counter our real life experiences.

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[misleb]

I have 2 WinXP desktop systems and a WinXP laptop. Uptime for me is generally measured in weeks. My restarts are mostly due to power outages, patches, or software installs. Or, every so often, the laptop will work itself into a frenzy and need to be restarted after 2-3 weeks. The game PC restarts a bit more frequently, mostly due to funky PC games.

And you call this stable??

"XP is stable and only crashes due to bad device drivers... unless I install some software, apply a patch, it just works itself into a frenzy after 2-3 weeks, or a game causes problems. But really, it is all about the device drivers."

WTF?

-matthew

Re:Microsoft acts like a kid.

[sgasch]

The great thing about linux is that, even when you have a run-away process chewing through memory, you can always kill -9 it and it will go away, even if that process is X-Windows/KDE/something big. As compared to Windows, where you can end task a process many times before it decides it will finally exit.

The problem with task manager is that it does not enable the privileges it needs to kill any process... this can lead to "end process" messages being ignored (access denied) for processes that you don't own. This includes stuff that is running as SYSTEM (even when you are Administrator).

The solution? There's a kill.exe utility in the windows resource kit that includes a -f switch... this does much the same thing as kill -9 in unix. The only time this will fail to terminate a process immediately (assuming you run it as admin) is when the kernel has a handle to the process still open (pending I/O operation etc). In this case, the I/O operations are cancelled and the process will disappear when they are done cancelling.

Another solution is to write code to acquire SeDebugName privilege (which will allow you to open a handle to any process on the machine) and then call TerminateProcess yourself.

Re:Here comes another security hole!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Yes, but will it ask permission first?

[David Hume]

Wow... Took only 30 years to catch up...

The only thing is that now anybody will be able to do it and not just some geeks. Show me any mommies and daddies out there can do this with Linux and I will show you a geek.

Yes, but will it ask permission first? Or even allow you to decide whether it will ask permission first? Even if it does, what will the default setting be?

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.

Maybe another security hole...

[dtjohnson]

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.

A "Restart Manager"? How typical.

[Art Tatum]

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.

Re:Here comes another security hole!

[rbarreira]

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...

Based on Transactional NTFS

[Vlad_Drak]

This is based off of transactional NTFS, which is similiar to a writable snapshot that can be committed back to the MFT.

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/ 04/25/411874.aspx

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.

Re:Here comes another security hole!

[Wesley55221]

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.

"Vista To Be Updated Without Robots?"

[ianjk]

wow, not enough sleep last night + too much coffee.

Re:Enough Updaters?

[CrazyNateJS]

Why multiple updaters? Here's a brief description of each(names abbreviated in some cases to save my fingers)... Microsoft Update - Lets you download updates for Windows and MS Office all at once... Windows Update - Lets you download just updates for Windows itself... MS Windows SUS - A corporate version of Windows Update, that lets the network admin decide which updates get pushed to machines in the domain, and all client machines refer to that server for updates instead of Windows Update MSI - The "standard" installer used by most Windows programs when you first install them MS SMS - The old version of SUS (see above)

It'll never happen

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:GEEZ FINALLY!

[ivan256]

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.

Re:I'll believe it

[Not The Real Me]

Win2K was supposed to have the restart without reboot.
WinXP was supposed to have the restart without reboot feature.

The only way I can see Vista as having this feature is if Microsoft finally includes signalling (ala Unix/Linux and most other professional operating systems).

Re:Lets get it out of the way right now....

[Pope]

Bollocks, it completely depends on the update needed. Java doesn't IIRC, but anything like a Security Update will. Turn off auto-install and it won't do anything but tell you there's an update, you can run the install when it's convenient.

Great job, Microsoft!

[wbren]

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.

Re:Great job, Microsoft!

[caudron]

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.

Because when I am asked to restart firefox I don't have to send a company-wide memo that all employees accessing server X will be unable to from 12:00AM to 12:05AM---assuming no problems otherwise it's 12:00AM to when the hell ever we figure out what went wrong on reboot of a production server.

But I agree that having the restart firefox is a pain when I'm just trying to surf the web.

Re:Great job, Microsoft!

[midnightblaze]

It takes a minute to restart Windows. It takes a couple of seconds to restart Firefox. I'm with you on your last point. About rebooting. In general, people are a bunch of reboot babies. I restart my Ubuntu machine all the time. And I hear shrieks and gasps from people. I just don't care.

Re:Great job, Microsoft!

[davegust]

You're still going to have to notify everybody, because to make the security update effective, any affected processes will need to be restarted, likely including the web and applications services.

Re:Great job, Microsoft!

[tetrode]

Let's remember that Windows has had numerous incantations, while Firefox is only a few years old. Wait until Firefox reaches it's 3.0 version.

You will be amazed.

Mark

Re:Lets get it out of the way right now....

[Blakey Rat]

However, it's trivial to extract a package's components by hand, unlink any in use kexts or halt any processes with open files that need to be updated, and place the new files from the package where the belong. Then you can restart the updated kexts and launch the updated processes yourself.

Are you entirely sure you know what "trivial" means?

Gonna piss me off

[0x4B494C4C]

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.

See, that is the point

[einhverfr]

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).