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No More Need To Reboot Fedora w/ Ksplice

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stacking-your-nines dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ksplice, the technology that allows Linux kernel updates without a reboot, is now free for users of the Fedora distribution. Using Ksplice is like 'replacing your car's engine while speeding down the highway,' and it can potentially save your Linux systems from a lot of downtime. Since Fedora users often live on the bleeding edge of Linux development, Ksplice makes it even easier to do so, and without reboots!"

8 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Awesome! by mark72005 · · Score: 5, Funny

    But do the windows "snap" to one side of the screen? See? Simple! ($100 please)

  2. Now this is even more applicable by MrEricSir · · Score: 5, Funny

    http://www.imagepoop.com/image/660/I-Reboot-As-Much-As-I-Get-Laid.html

    --
    There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
  3. Scary analogy by Xest · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Using Ksplice is like 'replacing your car's engine while speeding down the highway,'"

    So in other words it's something you'd never want to risk doing because it'd almost certainly cause a crash?

    I think they should've thought about a different analogy for this one...

    1. Re:Scary analogy by jimmyharris · · Score: 5, Informative

      If your server only takes a few minutes to reboot, then I can see why you wouldn't be so concerned about having to reboot for kernel upgrades. We have Oracle and Sybase database servers that take over 90 minutes to start up all their services (these are 16 and 32 core machines) and not having to reboot them for kernel updates would be a huge win for us.

    2. Re:Scary analogy by Leebert · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And how would you know for sure that it would actually boot correctly the next time you actually *need* to?

      There is nothing worse than having an actual unexpected reboot (UPS hiccup, whatever), and finding that the system that has been up for 3 years isn't booting, and not having ANY idea which patch put in place in the intervening time actually broke it.

      Not that, ahem, I speak from experience, or anything...

      Occasional rebooting is good, if for no other reason than making it happen in a controlled situation so you aren't surprised in an uncontrolled situation. If you really need the 100% uptime, then by all means, design a proper high availability system.

  4. Re:So... by Ironhandx · · Score: 5, Funny

    Windows user is middle of the road. He has brains and money but not enough of either.

  5. Re:interesting by scheme · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Seriously? I patched 5500 linux servers in 24 hours *by myself*, all the while they were churning through collider data from the LHC. This would be, in my opinion, what I would call a production environment. Shortcuts are nice, but sometimes you don't need them if your environment is engineered properly.

    That's slightly different. I assume you're at a CMS or ATLAS T2 center and frankly most of those systems were worker nodes that could be taken down for a minute or too for a reboot as jobs were drained off of them and they went idle. A quick reboot and they'll show up in condor or pbs a minute or two later and start processing jobs. The gatekeepers and gateways for the SE would be more complicated but if you got them up within a minute or two, most if not all of the running jobs wouldn't notice.

    --
    "When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
  6. Re:interesting by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your post is accurate =) *shakes fist*