[CentOS] reboot long uptimes?

[John Hinton]

Drew Weaver wrote:
>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: centos-bounces at centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces at centos.org] On
> Behalf Of Johnny Hughes
> Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 6:30 AM
> To: CentOS ML
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] reboot long uptimes?
>
> On Tue, 2007-02-13 at 12:06 +0100, D Ivago wrote:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>> I was just wondering if I should reboot some servers that are running 
>> over 180 days?
>>
>> They are still stable and have no problems, also top shows no zombie 
>> processes or  such, but maybe it's better for the hardware (like ext3 
>> disk checks f.e.) to reboot  every six months...
>>     
>
>   
About the only other reason I can think of is just to make sure it will 
restart when an emergency arises.

For instance, fans, drives, etc.....

Some servers will balk if a fan doesn't run. Some servers balk if a hard 
drive isn't up to speed. These types of things only show up during a 
reboot. In the case of scsi raids, hot swap drives... if a drive goes 
bad some equipment will require some action for the boot up to 
continue.. some don't.

For instance, considering RAID5 hot swappable....

If it's one drive on a raid, no biggie.. if it's two and you don't have 
hot spares.. that is a bigger issue. 'Scheduled' reboots, like when a 
new kernel comes out and you have time to be there and do something or 
have someone there if needed... it is a good time to be sure the self 
checks done by the server pass.

Basically, the longer the time before reboots, the more likely a error 
will occur. And it would be really bad if three or four of your drives 
suddenly didn't have enough strength to get up to speed... better that 
it is only one which can be easily swapped out.

Best,
John Hinton