[Sunhelp] Should I ever reboot a Solaris box if I don't need to?

[Steve Pribyl]

I would go with this recommendation, with some caution.
I usually did this for two reasons
1) Clean up the os. 
The os does leak this will also reset any tables and counters.
Also forces the applications to restart cleaning up any leaks and other
lost resources.
2) Trigger boot/hw/configuration problems.
Finds bad disks/filesystems,  maybe some knuklehead made a change that
will cause the system to fail at a more critital time.

#2 is a double edges sword.  If you find a problem its bad.  But at least
you will know when the might have a problem.  This way you can tell the
customer when the next unscheduled outage is.

Steve Pribyl
spribyl at enteract.com
http://www.enteract.com/~spribyl

On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Adams, Christopher wrote:

> I have a E 450 UltraSparc-II with 2 gig of ram and 6 18 gig Segate Cheetah
> drives (non-raid).  This 450 is "only" running an Oracle database (8.1.5)
> and has been running with no problems for 6 months straight without being
> rebooted.  This is a production server and has mission critical data on it.
> Last weekend our Oracle DBA made a call to "reboot" the server because he
> heard through the grapevine that "rebooting" a Solaris server (even if there
> are no problems or configuration changes necessary for this) every 3 to 4
> months is a good thing and should be done.  My question is, "Is this true?
> Should you reboot a running server that doesn't need to be rebooted for any
> administrative purposes every 3 to 4 months just for good measure?".  I
> think he is getting confused with Microsoft (no offense of course) NT
> Server.
> 
> Please Fire away with any advice you can give...
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance..
> 
> 
> 
> Christopher A.
>