Aren't upgrades demanding too much restarts?

[Ranjan Maitra]

On Wed, 1 Sep 2010 15:31:43 -0500 Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net>
wrote:

> kalinix wrote:
> 
> > ksplice works only for kernels. And make several modules out of the
> > deltas between the kernel release, which will be loaded in the older
> > kernel. So you'll end up with, let's say 2.6.33.6-147 and a bunch of
> > modules covering the patches up to the 2.6.33.8-149. Technically you are
> > at 2.6.33.8-149. Practically you still run 2.6.33.6-147 (with
> > improvements :) ).
> 
> What exactly is ksplice meant to do?
> I yum-installed it today, 
> and then ran "yum update" which installed a new kernel.
> I expected this to start running, but it didn't.
> Admittedly I didn't read any instructions.
> 


Sounds very cool, and I had not heard of it before today also, but here
is the results of yum info ksplice:

Summary     : Patching a Linux kernel without reboot
URL         : http://ksplice.com
License     : GPLv2
Description : Ksplice allows system administrators to apply security patches to
            : the Linux kernel without having to reboot. Ksplice takes as input
            : a source code change in unified diff format and the kernel source
            : code to be patched, and it applies the patch to the corresponding
            : running kernel. The running kernel does not need to have been
            : prepared in advance in any way.

Is it too good to be true?

Ranjan