[Cialug] Back to Linux Basics Series

[Aaron]

On 09/26/2013 10:14 PM, Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:
> 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
>
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SSH'ing from another machine, I will try next upgrade. Thank you for that.

Some AMD/ATI proprietary driver installs require a full reboot. I'm 
always annoyed by that. Nvidia (at least as of late) won't require a 
reboot, but does require a run level of 3 or 1 for single-user to 
install and preform any sort update. Which I like and think is more 
practical.

I only use the proprietary drivers when require i.e. games and graphic 
intensive video work.