Is a restart REALLY required after an upgrade?

[Derek Broughton]

Craig Hagerman wrote:

The short answer is "No" :-)

> Dapper is in the final stages of becoming official so things are
> changing often. However, the kernel hasn't changed (as far as I know).

Since?  It changed a week or so ago.

> And I would be surprised if it were true that the changes were 'so
> heavy' that everything needs to be reset with a shutdown. apt-get
> intelligently stops and restarts running daemons, 

No, it doesn't.  That's actually handled in the scripts associated with each
package.  Good packages stop & restart daemons, but it doesn't _have_ to
happen.

> askes about updating 
> config files and generally seems to be able to upgrade seemlessly.
> 
> As I mentioned I have also been running a debian amd64 unstable
> machine for 3 years now and have been though hundreds of
> dist-upgrades. It is on 24/7 and I rarely reboot, and NEVER because of
> any new upgrade (other than kernel).

I believe the messages come from Adept.  It seems regressive to me (and
others) but then I don't use Adept.
-- 
derek