[ale] uptime?

[David Corbin]

People need to distinguish with total uptime from current uptime.  Many
people get excited over current uptime, and it is reassurring to know
that your system can run for a year without human intervention, but it
also indicates the likelihood that your system doesn't have the latest
kernel patches applied.

Total uptime (or uptime-percentage), is a far more important number,
certainly.

> Grant Anderson wrote:
> 
> My turn.
> 
> I think that uptime is important.  When was the last time your car
> died on you?
> Uptime was important to you then I would suspect.  Otherwise you take
> if for
> granted.
> 
> Also, if you are used to your car being in the shop every month, then
> it's not
> unusual for you.  It would be unusual then, however, to go a year
> without having
> to take the car in.
> 
> In my experience, and in the cumulative experience others have
> reported to me,
> Windows boxes have more problems with memory leaks and thus need to be
> rebooted
> more often than Unix boxes.  One can always find exceptions to this
> but this does
> not change the reality.  One also does not see NT/2000 boxes replacing
> high end
> Unix boxes in enterprise server situations.  (Maybe one day...maybe
> not.)
> 
> One can argue back and forth, swap "exceptional" tales and
> experiences, and kick
> the subject around or even to death.  What I see out in the field is
> that NT/2000
> boxes have to be rebooted much more often than Unix and Linux boxes.
> This speaks
> favorably for Unix/Linux in this regard.
> 
> From a personal experience standpoint I regularly have had throughout
> the last
> couple of years have had to reboot my NT/2000 workstations and servers
> and I'm
> quite tired of it.  I wish Microsoft would fix this.  Anyone that has
> an NT box
> up and running for months or years is, in my opinion, lucky and should
> be happy
> with such fortuitous good fortune.
> 
> I also think that all current operating systems should be more robust,
> have more
> uptime, and have less need for rebooting.  Linux is very good in this
> regard but
> there is room for improvement I'm sure.
> 
> There I did it....stated my opinions....fanned the flames of THE
> UPTIME WAR and
> the MICROSOFT - NT WAR....and who knows what else?!
> 
> Compute in Peace,
> 
>    Grant
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Luis Luna [mailto:luis at btr-architects.com]
> Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 10:31 AM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: RE: [ale] uptime?
> 
>         I believe that, uptime is great when you have a good streak
> going. But I
> had two nt 4.0 server stay up for 1 year 4 months without rebooting or
> 
> hiccuping. I finally shut them down, pulled out the hard drives /
> cards /
> etc. and slapped them on a new mobo, PIII chip, RAM, and case.
> Re-applied
> the service pack, rebooted, and they have been running since
> 12/15/2000 like
> champs. So what. I built a RH 6.2 server at the same time, loaded
> samba and
> had it share files out along with the 2 NT boxes, I haven't needed to
> shut
> it down for the same time as the NT boxes.
>         I have an NT box acting as our proxy server and other internet
> jobs, P200
> with 96 megs of RAM, it has been up for 7 months. I only had to reboot
> 
> because of some software I loaded requested a reboot, so before that
> it had
> been running for the previous 8 months since I built it.
> 
> luis
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> F
> 
> > The point is, extended uptimes speaks of stability and robust kernel
> and
> > application code.  One of the problems I believe NT has is memory
> > leaks.  I used to have to run NT on my laptop, and it would just
> plain
> > go brain dead after a while.
> 
> In the interest of getting a good flamewar started...
> 
> I actually have 2 NT4 SP4 boxen running WINS/DNS (internal only) that
> have somehow managed to stay up since 04/21/2000. In contrast, a Samba
> 
> server running on identical hardware only lasted 4 months. After some
> analysis on the box in question, I believe I've found a faulty power
> supply feeding "dirty juice" to the Linux box. To make a long story
> short...
> 
> Uptimes don't mean sh*t!!!
> 
> I've seen HP-UX machines run for a year at a time, only to crash HARD
> 2
> mos after the next reboot. I have friends in the military who run
> NT4/Exchange 5.5 boxes that run for 6-8 months at a time without so
> much
> as a hiccup. I've also seen Linux machines run for over a year. But
> I've
> also seen Linux machines crash and burn. There are so many factors
> involved in maintaining uptime that it's not worth attempting to
> compare
> OS statistics.
> 
> I'll have to say that it's been my experience that Linux/BSD systems
> do
> seem to run longer. I've never personally seen a BSD box crash.
> However, I
> think the hardware, system load, and configuration have much more to
> do
> with it than the OS. There are plenty of things for us (Linux
> enthusiasts)
> to brag about without resorting to using uptime statistics.
> 
> --
> Jonathan Rickman
> X Corps Security
> http://www.xcorps.net
> 
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-- 
David Corbin 		
dcorbin at machturtle.com
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