[Cialug] Back to Linux Basics Series

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

On 2013-09-26 at 21:15:08 Aaron wrote:
> > Reboots are for hardware upgrades.
> 
> Unless this is sarcasm or somehow a wishful statement, I disagree with
> it. Many a time I've had to reboot to some how get a piece of
> software to work. This is of course mostly having to do with a X
> server or other X related change. But given what it is and does, can
> we avoid it?

To avoid a reboot, switch to a text-mode terminal and restart X. If the 
video driver is having issues so that switching to a terminal is not 
possible, then SSH in from another machine, kill X, unload the video 
driver, reload the video driver, and start X.

The only times you should *have* to reboot are for hardware upgrades and 
kernel updates. Sometimes it is easier just to reboot, but if you have 
the time to figure out how to avoid rebooting you might learn something 
useful. Half of what i know about the init system is probably from 
digging around trying to figure out what things to restart so as to 
avoid a reboot.

__
Daniel A. Ramaley
Network Engineer 2

Dial Center 112, Drake University
2407 Carpenter Ave / Des Moines IA 50311 USA
Tel: +1 515 271-4540
Fax: +1 515 271-1938
E-mail: daniel.ramaley at drake.edu