How often do you reboot? If no problems...

[Jonah2]

Until recently I ran a 1.8Ghz box with 512RAM, and with so little RAM I found it helpful to reboot weekly. Now I'm running a RedHat 2.4Ghz box with 1GB RAM (and only 60 active accounts) and am having no RAM, swap, or CPU problems. Do other users reboot periodically anyway, once a week or once a month? I've always felt that regular reboots just keep things clean, and they seem to keep my home MacOSX healthy -- but am I being superstitious? Should I just wait until my swap fills up or other problems arise, and then reboot?

Thanks. I know it's kinda a dumb question, but I'm curious what other sysadmins do.

[ravenrtc]

I usually reboot my machine once every 2 weeks, or when necessary (Whichever comes first ) I find it keeps my problems to a minimum, as I haven't had a major problem with my server for about 1 and a half years ever since I started doing that.

[Blue|Fusion]

I reboot whenever I install a new kernel. I'm using RHEL3 with the stock RHN built kernels. They come out every few months. Longest I've gone without a reboot was 199 days (lol), and prior to that, 120 something days. Right now it's been online 90 something days (too lazy to actually look). No problems thus far, and had it a year...yesterday, actually.

[monaghan]

Why reboot if you don't have a problem, surely this is asking for a problem to happen ?

Back in the dark ages, I used to reboot the 80 or so NT boxes I managed weekly to keep things ticking over cleanly, but never a *NIX box. You should only need to reboot these for a kernel update (or gross sysadmin error )

[Izzee]

Indeed. Windoze boxes need rebooting at regular intervals often several times a day or their issues just spiral out of control. My ISP is a point in question. Just about every day they drop connections so they can reboot their MonStrosities.

Nix boxes have no such problems and as monaghan points out, need very few reboots as most issues can be resolved by a competent admin without the need to reboot.

It often used to be a sign of a good hosting company if they had been up for months on end and not days or hours.

[rpmws]

I have a box that has been up 541 days. Not much on it ..but it's serving a web site. Most of my boxes go for 30-60 days and either lock up and need a reboot or a kernel update. I never reboot just for the hell of it.

[chirpy]

Same here for me. I reboot only when necessary on Linux:

Kernel upgrades
OS disk mount option changes that require a reboot as it's always in use

That's it.

[PWSowner]

Same here. I've had over 6 months between reboots.

[umutbesler]

# uptime
21:08:33 up 254 days, 4:26, 1 user, load average: 0.16, 0.09, 0.08

[Jonah2]

Thanks for your feedback! (I'm the guy who asked the question in the first place.)

I can see that my minimal RAM on my old box was the reason I'd needed to reboot it periodically, but with my new box running smoothly I'll take everyone's experience to heart and not reboot just for the hell of it anymore. :-)

[FeeReD]

I would check you RAM every few days. I reboot every 2 months or if my RAM usage gets to high then I just reboot but that rarely ever happends with 2GB ram. I have over 200 websites hosted to.