Is it a security breach?

[Phillip Susi]

Why is killing user processes evil?  It seems nice to me.  It keeps you 
from having to reboot, OR manually figure out what you need to restart. 
  It makes the upgrade process more smooth and user friendly.  People 
like not having to reboot.

Martin Pitt wrote:
> Hi Oliver!
> 
> Oliver Grawert [2005-10-10 16:29 +0200]:
> 
>>from xscreensaver.postinst (i didnt change it from the debian version)
>>
>>---- snip ----
>># Reload all running xscreensaver processes
>>if [ "$1" = "configure" ]; then
>>        kill -s HUP `pidof xscreensaver` >/dev/null 2>&1 || true
>>fi
>>---- snap ----
> 
> 
> Killing user processes in postinsts is pretty evil; since after a
> dist-upgrade you need to reboot the computer anyway, it also is not
> necessary.
> 
> It would be worthwile to consider either completely removing this code
> or maybe replace it with calling
> /usr/share/update-notifier/notify-reboot-required (which is more than
> necessary, but still better than killing).
> 
> Martin
>