From owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jun 28 16:44:24 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8CA6A16A4CE for ; Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:44:24 +0000 (GMT) Received: from lurza.secnetix.de (lurza.secnetix.de [83.120.8.8]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 02ED943D48 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:44:24 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from olli@lurza.secnetix.de) Received: from lurza.secnetix.de (upcryt@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by lurza.secnetix.de (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id i5SGiMvV097810 for ; Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:44:22 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from oliver.fromme@secnetix.de) Received: (from olli@localhost) by lurza.secnetix.de (8.12.11/8.12.11/Submit) id i5SGiM0h097809; Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:44:22 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from olli) Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 18:44:22 +0200 (CEST) Message-Id: <200406281644.i5SGiM0h097809@lurza.secnetix.de> From: Oliver Fromme To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG In-Reply-To: <200406281706.11188.matt@fruitsalad.org> X-Newsgroups: list.freebsd-stable User-Agent: tin/1.5.4-20000523 ("1959") (UNIX) (FreeBSD/4.10-RELEASE (i386)) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Subject: Re: Maximum uptime 497 days? X-BeenThere: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list Reply-To: freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG List-Id: Production branch of FreeBSD source code List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 16:44:24 -0000 Matt Douhan wrote: > On Monday 28 June 2004 16.03, Oliver Fromme wrote: > > Rob wrote: > > > By accident I happen to come across this remarkable limit of > > > uptime registration for FreeBSD systems. After 497 days, the > > > timer jumps to zero again. > > > > > > 497 days is less than a 1.5 years ! > > > > I'd be very embarrassed to have machines with that a high > > uptime -- It means that they haven't been updated for that > > a long time and are probably full of security holes. ;-) > > why ? > > they may not be public machines at all and be isolated to an environment where > security is not the primary concern You did notice the smiley, didn't you? But seriously, I think that the widespread uptime fetishism is somewhat dangerous. People often try hard to avoid rebooting machines, just in order to "save their precious uptime", even if there are good reasons to reboot. A machine with 1.5 years of uptime -- be it in an isolated environment or not -- has accumulated the bugs of 1.5 years that have been fixed in the latest version of the OS, so to speak. In fact there is software which I wouldn't want to run even if it were outdated for only a few days. Mysql is one such example. Every time I looked at the huge list of bugs that have been fixed in the latest version, I almost got a heart attack. (Changing to PostgreSQL was very healthy.) Those are just my opinions, of course, and YMMV. I'm very sorry, it got quite off-topic by now. Best regards Oliver -- Oliver Fromme, secnetix GmbH & Co KG, Oettingenstr. 2, 80538 München Any opinions expressed in this message may be personal to the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way. "One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." -- Robert Firth