Anybody remember the USS Yorktown?
The one that ran Windows NT 4.0 and had the apocryphal story about blue-screening and having to be towed back to shore?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_%28CG-48%29#Smart...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Yorktown_%28CG-48%29#Smart...
In 3 August 1998 issue of Government Computer News, a retraction by DiGiorgio was published. He claims the reporter altered his statements, and insists that he did not claim the Yorktown was towed into Norfolk. GCN stands by its story.[7]
Atlantic Fleet officials also denied the towing, reporting that Yorktown was "dead in the water" for just 2 hours and 45 minutes.[6] Captain Richard Rushton, commanding officer of Yorktown at the time of the incident, also denied that the ship had to be towed back to port, stating that the ship returned under its own power.[8]
Even though the problem was caused by programming error in the Remote Data Base Manager application and not by problems with the operating system itself, criticism of operating system choice ensued. Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there have been numerous software failures associated with NT aboard the Yorktown.
This bug took down air traffic control computers: http://news.techworld.com/operating-systems/2275/microsoft-s...
That's not so bad. So long as they have the option to skip this week's reboot, this shouldn't be a problem in combat. (They should've randomized the reboot schedule so that an enemy couldn't exploit it.)
It seems you could get close to ensuring such a time would exist by creating constant emergencies for the crew to deal with such that rebooting would be hazardous, and waiting for the reboot-or-crash date to launch the major attack.
Sun Microsystems Inc. SunOS 5.8 Generic February 2000
DST Patches Applied Tue Mar 6 17:16:02 CST 2007
# uname -a
SunOS 5.8 Generic_108528-09 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60
# uptime
3:36pm up 811 day(s), 17 min(s), 3 users, load average: 0.63, 0.79, 0.74
It's happened to me before.
Go reboot that damn thing!
He's saying, how do you know that the system hasn't acquired some sort of configuration/software/hardware degradation in the meantime that only manifests on boot?
If you don't regularly exercise/test a critical function, then you substantially increase your risk that the critical function will fail when you really do need it.
Q: What's the worst time to find out your system won't boot? A: Right after it crashed.
You are better off with scheduled maintenance periods where you can reboot the server and it isn't critical if it fails. That gives you a chance to correct anything on your terms rather than fire-fighting.
apocryphal: of doubtful authenticity