From: Rodrigo Barbosa rodrigob@suespammers.org
That, my friend, is very much true. Depending on the kind of server you are running (mumber of different processes), a reboot will be much easier. Did that myself a few times.
As far as examining running processes, one should have _good_ operational procedures and practices to track what is and isn't running on your system. If you can, stick with Sys-V start/kill init scripts for everything, and document anything that can't be (as well as why).
I don't like to rely on reboots to do such things. In fact, when building a new, standard system configuration, I like to shunt to "init 1" and back to "init 3" (run-levels assume distro is Fedora-based) several times to ensure that all my start/kill init scripts are proper.
That way I can stop and start user-space services piecemeal and completely.
-- Bryan J. Smith mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org