Howto: avoid having to reboot!

[Heliode]

I'm starting this howto because a lot of people seem to be under the impression that you have to reboot Ubuntu to get certain changes applied. However, when working with Ubuntu, or Linux in general, it is important to remember that rebooting is a Windows CrazyThing (TM). The only thing you should really have to reboot a Linux machine for is for changes to the kernel. All other things you can reload/restart/whatever at run-time. This is due to the modular nature of the Linux system. Why do you think Unix systems have the highest uptime?

Well anyway, lets get this started. I propose we make this kind of a collaborative effort since i'm by no means an expert (yet) and there's some stuff I don't know. So i'll just add what I do know and we can just add to each others knowledge, ok? Alright then.

The graphical user interface
As most of you know, you can refresh the gnome panel with the command:

killall gnome-panel

However, when screwing around with your Xorg.conf, you have to restart X in order to apply your changes. You can do this with the key combination:

 Ctrl+Alt+Backspace

WARNING: This is a very powerful command! It won't ask you if you are sure, or if you would like to save anything you have running; it just shuts off everything in brute force. A more 'civilized' way might be to do '/etc/init.d/gdm restart', but i'm going to need confirmation on that.

Services
A default Ubuntu system has lots of services running. You can get a list of them with:

ls /etc/init.d

For example, lets say you have a samba server running, and you made a change to the samba config file. You can restart samba like this:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Or if a change has occurred in your network environment (new cable plugged in, interface removed, etc), you could do:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

And so on..

This is all I can think of right now. I'm sure there's lots of other stuff, but in general just remember: rebooting in order to apply stuff is a Windows CrazyThing, and if you feel like you have to do it there is probably a better way.

I encourage anyone to add to this Howto!

Have fun!

[Firetech]

Some quick notes:

1. A lot of the init.d scripts also have a 'reload' action (e.g. "sudo /etc/init.d/samba reload") which just reloads the conf file. All of them doesn't work without restarting the program, but most do.

2. "/etc/init.d/gdm restart" is correct (if you run kubuntu, exchange gdm with kdm). Although, a good thing to do is to press ctrl+alt+backspace after you've logged out. "/etc/init.d/gdm restart" is mostly used for reloading gdm's config.

Anyway, it's a great howto. I would probably had written something like this if you hadn't

[Sam]

Nice howto !

[_Pete_]

Also good trick to really get everything restarted without rebooting is going
to the single user mode (init 1) and then back to the normal runlevel (init 2).

[Rodrigo]

Also good trick to really get everything restarted without rebooting is going
to the single user mode (init 1) and then back to the normal runlevel (init 2).

Why Oh why I didnt think of THAT before ?!?!

cool tip

[Heliode]

Also good trick to really get everything restarted without rebooting is going
to the single user mode (init 1) and then back to the normal runlevel (init 2).

That's also a good one! Not recommended if you are running a server people depend upon, but great for workstation users who don't like to wait for their system to reboot!

[mr_ed]

There's one thing that I can't do without rebooting, so far: If I'm connected to the 'net at work, and I pack up my laptop and go home without turning it off, I can't get access to the 'net until I reboot. I've blown away my resolv.conf, did an /etc/init.d/____ restart on every system I could see that looked relevant, and I still can't. Oh well.

[Heliode]

did you try;

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

sudo ifdown eth0

sudo ifup eth0

sudo dhclient eth0 (if you're using DHCP)

[testingubuntu]

There's one thing that I can't do without rebooting, so far: If I'm connected to the 'net at work, and I pack up my laptop and go home without turning it off, I can't get access to the 'net until I reboot. I've blown away my resolv.conf, did an /etc/init.d/____ restart on every system I could see that looked relevant, and I still can't. Oh well.

sudo /sbin/service network restart <-- Does that do it?

[epb613]

Same things happens to me on my laptop.

sudo modprobe -r ipw2200
sudo modprobe ipw2200
sudo dhclient eth1 (or whatever your interface is called)

fixes it though.