"In order to complete the update your computer needs to be restarted."

[Andrew Jarrett]

On 10/7/07, Derek Broughton <news at pointerstop.ca> wrote:
> Andrew Jarrett wrote:
>
> > On 10/7/07, Peter Lewis <prlewis at letterboxes.org> wrote:
> >> On Sunday 07 October 2007 18:24:51 Wulfy wrote:
> >> > Peter Lewis wrote:
> >> > > Kubuntu just gave me an icon with this as the tooltip... "In order to
> >> > > complete the update your computer needs to be restarted."
> >> >
> >> > Kernel update?  Just about the only thing that happens for on my
> >> > system.... :@)
> >>
> >> Yeah, I think it was a kernel update (and presumably an Adept update,
> >> since previous kernel updates haven't generated this message.
> >>
> >> I'm not convinced that the restart is required in order to "complete the
> >> update" though, just to use it.
> >>
> >> This was just a bit of a blast from the past!
> >>
> >> :-)
> >
> > If it was indeed a kernel update, then wouldn't you expect to restart
> > the computer?  When you do a kernel update, you are probably switching
> > to a brand new build or version of the entire kernel.  A lot of things
> > have changed, so you need to restart the computer and boot into the
> > new kernel to test things out.  This is also for the safety of your
> > data because the update might break your installation.
>
> Well, not really.  _Until_ you reboot, you aren't using the new kernel, so
> nothing is going to break.  In fact, rebooting is more likely to break it -
> but even Linux systems have to reboot occasionally.
> --
> derek

I know that; that's what I'm saying.  IANAE, but when you update any
program, you need to reload it into memory in order to use the new
version.  After the kernel is updated, the computer needs to be
restarted so the new kernel is loaded into memory.  There is no way
that one will be able to use the updated kernel until the computer is
restarted.

When I said that the "update" might break your system, I was referring
to the complete process (including the restart).  Of course
downloading a new kernel version won't break your system.  It's when
the new kernel is used that problems may arise...

Andrew

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