Backup and upgrade of running programs

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Volker Wysk wrote:

>There's something that has troubled me for a long time. When you
>make a backup, or do an upgrade, what happens when the affected
>programs or data are still running or in use? Wouldn't this mean
>trouble?

It can, but many programs are pretty polite about such things and
will do a quick save before shutting down if something dramatic
happens. I wouldn't count on that, though, and would always err on
the side of caution.

>There are a lot of programs for doing a backup or an upgrade, which
>let the user do just that. For instance, KDE Discover and the KDE
>Muon Package Manager. I'm not using those much, because I prefer
>command line. But it seems like they let you upgrade a (running)
>program by doing nothing more than a few clicks. Or what happens
>when you upgrade the KDE desktop, which is running at the same time?
>Or make a (full) backup with some graphical tool?
>
>Wouldn't it leave the system, or the backup, in an inconsistent
>state?

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that when you upgrade the
desktop, you get a little pop-up telling you you'll need to restart
for the settings to take effect, which means you're still using the
old desktop until then and shouldn't have any issues.

>Isn't it necessary to, in principle, shut down affected services,
>before doing a backup or an upgrade?

That's never a bad idea.

>Why isn't that recommended anywhere?

I think it is. I don't have an examples off the top of my head, but
I'm sure I've seen recommendations like that at times.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.