[Gentoo] Uptime & reboots?

[RabbieBurns]

Now that both my servers are 10000 miles away from me, Ive not been inclined to reboot them just in case they dont come back up..

I do updates once a month and stuff, but obviously Ive not updated the kernel in a while..

robert@roberts / $ uptime
 04:46:53 up 210 days,  8:38,  3 users,  load average: 4.75, 2.05, 1.53

This one is an ancient machine and getting replaced when Im home at xmas so not really worried about that one. In fact, Im pretty sure it wouldnt survive a reboot heh.

robert@oasis ~ $ uptime
 04:48:16 up 267 days, 12:26,  1 user,  load average: 0.21, 0.11, 0.09

This one is running 3 VMs one of which is 2008R2 running Exchange, whihc is kinda important..

Should I be worried about doing kernel upgrades and rebooting more often?

[kmount]

Genkernel or home baked? Same .config?

How big a jump in versions?

Set up grub to only try it once so if it fails someone can power cycle it and it will go back to the old one.

[RabbieBurns]

robert@roberts ~ $ uname -a
Linux roberts.blah.co.uk 2.6.31-gentoo-r6 #2 Tue Jan 5 23:07:34 GMT 2010 i686 AMD Athlon(TM) XP 3000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

so not too old..

You hadn't introduced me to the wonder of genkernel back when these were built, so these are just manual config. They are both different, ones a x86 the others a x64 and the kernel has been modified ad-hoc as and when ive had to enable something else to get something working.

My concerns with them not coming back up are mostly to do with the disks.. the older one has about 10 drives in it and Im not sure all of them would pass the checkdisk..

[kmount]

Ah, I thought you were concerned more about the kernel change.

Well, the question's there do you *need* to update/reboot, what kind of access to the systems is there?

[RabbieBurns]

Ive shifted most important services off the older one onto the new one.. so the old one is really just a file server which has about 12 hrs / day heavy usage..

Its all non-critical data I guess Ill just leave it and hope it lasts till xmas..