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One of the biggest cultural changes I had when I jumped the fence from Windows to Linux was the reboot. On Windows, the culture was strongly "reboot first, if i

by vacri 10y ago

One of the biggest cultural changes I had when I jumped the fence from Windows to Linux was the reboot. On Windows, the culture was strongly "reboot first, if it still happens, then it's a problem". On linux, it was a measure of last resort, because then you can't fix the problem (as you say). Obviously the latter is the best way, but it's interesting that the culture of the two systems is so different, no doubt borne from Windows' legacy era.

paulddraper 10y ago
Well, the other difference is that reboot isn't often needed to solve the issue, unless you're messing around with kernel modules.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  This may well be changing though, as more and more "desktop-isms" claw their way deeper into the stack.
XorNot 10y ago
Except you have to triage. I'll happily reboot any box which fails unusually because my overall system should be HA enough to survive that. It's only interesting if the failure count is high, and I'm running reasonably up to date code. Otherwise there's too many things in a day to get through.
- wpietri 10y ago
  I'm with Vacri; I'm very reluctant to do that. Small problems can be harbingers of big ones. Even when they aren't, small problems often confound the ability to solve big ones. Most concerning for me, though, is what safety experts call "normalization of deviance". It's the process by which people become accustomed to small failures, which creates opportunities for big failures to happen. A big example is the Challenger disaster. [1] I see shops with low bug rates, where people think a lot about quality. And I see shops that, thanks to high bug rates, are too busy fighting fires to ever spend much time on quality. I never see any place in between. And I think normalization of deviance is why. [1] http://mikemullane.com/stopping-normalization-of-deviance/ http://mikemullane.com/stopping-normalization-of-deviance/
Joeri 10y ago
There are windows sysadmins who schedule nightly server reboots "to keep the machines healthy". I've seen them in action. It is scary. The scariest part? It helps.

by vacri 10y ago

paulddraper 10y ago

Well, the other difference is that reboot isn't often needed to solve the issue, unless you're messing around with kernel modules.

digi_owl 10y ago
This may well be changing though, as more and more "desktop-isms" claw their way deeper into the stack.

XorNot 10y ago

Except you have to triage. I'll happily reboot any box which fails unusually because my overall system should be HA enough to survive that. It's only interesting if the failure count is high, and I'm running reasonably up to date code. Otherwise there's too many things in a day to get through.

wpietri 10y ago
I'm with Vacri; I'm very reluctant to do that. Small problems can be harbingers of big ones. Even when they aren't, small problems often confound the ability to solve big ones. Most concerning for me, though, is what safety experts call "normalization of deviance". It's the process by which people become accustomed to small failures, which creates opportunities for big failures to happen. A big example is the Challenger disaster. [1] I see shops with low bug rates, where people think a lot about quality. And I see shops that, thanks to high bug rates, are too busy fighting fires to ever spend much time on quality. I never see any place in between. And I think normalization of deviance is why. [1] http://mikemullane.com/stopping-normalization-of-deviance/ http://mikemullane.com/stopping-normalization-of-deviance/

Joeri 10y ago

There are windows sysadmins who schedule nightly server reboots "to keep the machines healthy". I've seen them in action. It is scary. The scariest part? It helps.