how do i know i need a reboot after a console based "upgrade"?

[Derek Broughton]

Mike.Kent at indystar.com wrote:

> Why would you do a dist-upgrade every day? Wouldn't that be likely to
> break things, such as apps that use an old version of php or perl?

I actually do an automatic (cron'd) "aptitude dist-upgrade --download-only",
look at what's downloaded and then dist-upgrade probably every second day.

However, the only thing I actually worry about is libc6 upgrades - which
would be equally a problem if I used "upgrade" (I've often had trouble if
libc6 and libc6-i686 are both updated, and find it safer to remove
libc6-i686 first).  Well behaved updates shouldn't break anything, and
haven't in my experience.  Of course, ime, dist-upgrade is also not often
different from upgrade unless you change the release in your apt sources.
-- 
derek