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Comment by leetrout | Hacker News Reader

Question to the author and anyone else here:

Do you find the advice to reboot the VM after making a security change useful?

It will certainly work but from my understanding it should be able to change that setting and alter the users login such that you only need to logout and back in. Maybe I am mistaken?

I try very hard to avoid reboots - it may be distracting for a focused article like this - so curious what others think.

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My rule of thumb is to reboot instances after making changes mainly so you can be confident that the machine will continue to work correctly after the reboot, and you'll still be able to login.

This is based on past experiences where I've configured a VM, then a year later needed to make changes but been terrified of a reboot because I can't remember if it's likely to keep working or not!

Been there done that! If you do end up with a machine that's non-bootable or seriously impaired, it's a lot easier to figure out when it's "just" today's update in question and not a year's worth.

According to https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/108605 it looks like only a logout and login was required for the changes to take effect. I didn't know this at the time which is why I initiated a reboot.

I think it's a holdover from older times...and underscores a resiliency thing. Rebooting forces garbage collection, and being able to withstand a reboot with no loss of service builds geek cred. :D

Are you asking about the max number of open files allowed?

That was why the reboot was needed.

You shouldn’t need to reboot the system for settings to take effect - pretty much everything except some kernel upgrades can be done without a reboot.

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