reboot after upgrade? and best practice

[Anil Felipe Duggirala]

hello everyone,
I would like to ask what is the best practice for upgrading (updating all packages, ie.
"dnf upgrade") in my Fedora 32 Workstation. The Gnome Software graphical
application provides a way for me to do this, but it can also be achieved in the command
line. Do these two methods achieve exactly the same results? I would also like to plainly
ask if in any occasion it is necessary or advisable to perform a system reboot after doing
an "dnf upgrade". I have noticed that when the upgrade is performed with Gnome
Software, a reboot is always performed after the upgrade.
thank you,

[Qiyu Yan]

Anil Felipe Duggirala <anilduggirala(a)fastmail.fm&gt; 于 2020年7月20日周一 下午12:22写道：

>  hello everyone,
>  I would like to ask what is the best practice for upgrading (updating all
>  packages, ie. "dnf upgrade") in my Fedora 32 Workstation. The Gnome
>  Software graphical application provides a way for me to do this, but it can
>  also be achieved in the command line. Do these two methods achieve exactly
>  the same results? 
If after a reboot, they have exact results.

>  I would also like to plainly ask if in any occasion it is necessary
> or
>  advisable to perform a system reboot after doing an "dnf upgrade". 
A file used by a running program is updated, if the program/service don't
get restarted, the updates won't apply (and the space used by the old
version won't get released until restart the program)

For example, when you update Firefox,the running Firefox will still be the
older version until you close all Firefox window and restart Firefox.

>  I have noticed that when the upgrade is performed with Gnome
> Software, a
>  reboot is always performed after the upgrade.
>  
Yes, full reboot always confirm that everything that needs restart is
correctly restarted, also those don't need to, personally, I don't like
this design.

(I think) The better way is:
https://dnf-plugins-core.readthedocs.io/en/latest/needs_restarting.html
Or
https://dnf-plugins-extras.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tracer.html

>  thank you,
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[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Mon, 2020-07-20 at 13:33 +0800, Qiyu Yan wrote:
>  Yes, full reboot always confirm that everything that needs restart
> is
>  correctly restarted, also those don't need to, personally, I don't like
>  this design.
>  
>  (I think) The better way is:
>  https://dnf-plugins-core.readthedocs.io/en/latest/needs_restarting.html
>  Or
>  https://dnf-plugins-extras.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tracer.html 
Agreed. That's also my preferred method, using the DNF tracer plugin so
it's called automatically:

python3-dnf-plugin-tracer

It will tell you what programs you need to restart, or if you need to
log out and in again. It will also tell you when you should reboot. It
occasionally has a false positive, i.e. telling you to reboot when it
doesn't seem to be necessary, but that's a minor issue.

poc

[Samuel Sieb]

On 7/19/20 9:21 PM, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
>  I would like to ask what is the best practice for upgrading (updating
> all packages, ie. "dnf upgrade") in my Fedora 32 Workstation. The Gnome Software
> graphical application provides a way for me to do this, but it can also be achieved in the
> command line. Do these two methods achieve exactly the same results? I would also like to
> plainly ask if in any occasion it is necessary or advisable to perform a system reboot
> after doing an "dnf upgrade". I have noticed that when the upgrade is performed
> with Gnome Software, a reboot is always performed after the upgrade. 
If you reboot after the dnf upgrade then the results are the same. 
Until then you will still be using old versions of libraries and old 
version of applications until you restart them.  You can only use a new 
kernel by rebooting.  Some applications like Firefox can get unhappy if 
you upgrade while they're running and can crash or have strange behaviour.

When you use Gnome Software to do the upgrade, the reboot is not after 
the upgrade, the reboot is required to *do* the upgrade.  Only the 
downloading of packages is done, then when you reboot, it will do the 
upgrade, then reboot again into the updated system.

[George N. White III]

On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 at 04:44, Samuel Sieb <samuel(a)sieb.net&gt; wrote:

>  On 7/19/20 9:21 PM, Anil Felipe Duggirala wrote:
>  > I would like to ask what is the best practice for upgrading (updating
>  all packages, ie. "dnf upgrade") in my Fedora 32 Workstation. The Gnome
>  Software graphical application provides a way for me to do this, but it can
>  also be achieved in the command line. Do these two methods achieve exactly
>  the same results? I would also like to plainly ask if in any occasion it is
>  necessary or advisable to perform a system reboot after doing an "dnf
>  upgrade". I have noticed that when the upgrade is performed with Gnome
>  Software, a reboot is always performed after the upgrade.
>
>  If you reboot after the dnf upgrade then the results are the same.
>  Until then you will still be using old versions of libraries and old
>  version of applications until you restart them.  You can only use a new
>  kernel by rebooting.  Some applications like Firefox can get unhappy if
>  you upgrade while they're running and can crash or have strange behaviour.
>  
Any application that makes extensive use of dynamically loaded libraries can
potentially run into trouble if it loads a recently upgraded library while
still using
older versions of other libraries.   The problems may not always be highly
visible (e.g., silent corruption of a database) and if visible are likely
to be
interpreted as a "buggy" update and can generate nuisance bug reports
and cause users to avoid updating.

>  When you use Gnome Software to do the upgrade, the reboot is not after
>  the upgrade, the reboot is required to *do* the upgrade.  Only the
>  downloading of packages is done, then when you reboot, it will do the
>  upgrade, then reboot again into the updated system.
>  
This method is the most robust way to ensure there are no problems
associated with updating.   It not only minimizes the chance of users
having problems with updates, it also reduces the workloads for the
people who deal with bug reports.

-- 
George N. White III

[Anil Felipe Duggirala]

Thanks everyone for your answers. This is very clear to me now.
I guess I will go the gui way for now, sometimes one can even upgrade/update while
shutting down the machine, which is useful.
thanks again.