[jasong]

Just noticed this while downloading the Security Update and IE Update.



The blue arrow indicates an update that requires a reboot.

Software Update has really grown in regards to the amount of info it provides.

-- Jason

[ 10-21-2001: Message edited by: jasong ]

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Yup, it looks real nice now.

[Brazuca]

sure it is nice, but there is a problem. If a restart is required, you can't quit the software update app without a restart unless you force it to quit. This means that you can't continue about your business and restart later unless you simply hide the software update app or force quitting it. A minor thing, but something that should be looked at.

[BuonRotto]

It warns you before you start with the option to cancel the update.

[SkullMacPN]

Originally posted by Brazuca:
<STRONG>sure it is nice, but there is a problem. If a restart is required, you can't quit the software update app without a restart unless you force it to quit. This means that you can't continue about your business and restart later unless you simply hide the software update app or force quitting it. A minor thing, but something that should be looked at.</STRONG>

Uhh... If an update needs a reboot, its probably *not* a good idea to put it off. After all, what if the update replaces an important system file that is accessed after the update is complete (but prior to reboot)? I see a crash commin on.

[Brazuca]

Originally posted by SkullMacPN:
<STRONG>

Uhh... If an update needs a reboot, its probably *not* a good idea to put it off. After all, what if the update replaces an important system file that is accessed after the update is complete (but prior to reboot)? I see a crash commin on.</STRONG>

ok...that's a good point. I'm going back to my cave now....

[jwblase]

When I updated with the new security update, even after the update finished, a dialog box came up telling me to reboot. As long as I didn't click the restart button, I could still go along my business.

As long as you keep SU open in the background, you can then restart your system whenever you want to.

JB

[ntsc]

Could Apple not design the update software to restart the services that it replaces rather than the whole machine? I don't know too much about UNIX but would this not be possible?

Just an idea i had...

[schwa]

I think a restart is needed because some low-level process (maybe even the kernel) is modified in the security update, and can't be dynamically reloaded into RAM.

[scarab]

According to my Linux pals it is possible to just restart the affected services when an update is applied. I guess you could always to to the terminal and kill Software Update and stop it from bugging you

[The DJ]

Originally posted by scarab:
<STRONG>According to my Linux pals it is possible to just restart the affected services when an update is applied. I guess you could always to to the terminal and kill Software Update and stop it from bugging you </STRONG>

This is true, theoratically you only need to restart the system if you update the systems kernel. But sometimes kernel extensions have been updated and altough it is possible i believe to unload the old version and load the new version, it is not an easy task. And quite different from programs. It might just be they choose to stay away from the kernel for now and focus on the programs alone, which are much easier to restart. So any kernel extension would then require a reboot, and since this was a security update, it probably involved a kernel ext.

Of course even then there is no reason to reboot, only if you want the new components to take effect. But why not i'd say.

DJ

DJ

[Millennium]

Theoretically, it should be possible to do some kind of "soft reboot" which restarts the GUI and the BSD subsystem, but not Mach itself. It would still require a little downtime, obviously, but not as much as a full reboot would. Perhaps Apple should look into that; it ought to be doable for everything except the Mach kernel itself.

[Kickaha]

That Security Update modifies the WindowServer... you're right that you could leave the Mach kernel up and restart the WindowServer alone, but to the average user that's *still* going to look like a reboot (one that takes a few less seconds, but they still are going to have to log out, and wait).

The only reason I can think of, practically, why Apple would want to go the soft-reset route is for servers that need as good an uptime as possible.

Theoretically, yeah, you could do it, and fairly easily. Practically, I don't think it matter to 99.9% of the users out there.

More on topic: I do like the restart required badge, but it took me *forever* to figure out what it was, and the supplied Help didn't say anywhere that I could find.

Upgrade the Help system Apple! Sheesh!

[jasong]

I'm gonna start talking about things I know very little about, but . . .

I have been playing around with a Linux machine at my office (RedHat 7.1), and when using the Update program, I have never been prompted to reboot, even though I am pretty sure I have twice updated the kernal.

OS X already has the ability to restart certain services (remember during the public beta killing the networking so you could change settings without rebooting?), hopefully it will gain a few more.

This security patch caused my Pismo to have its second reboot since I upgrading to 10.1 (the first being a colossal crash brought on by the Internet Connect program)

-- Jason