[Beowulf] Linux bios was Re: ECC support

[Toon Moene]

Mark Hahn wrote:

>> Fascinating !  So now the trend reverses - I reboot every week, 
>> because I want to keep my Debian testing setup up-to-date (OpenSSL, 
>> anyone :-), but
> 
> the thing I find sad is that the sugar-coating of linux (ubuntu etc)
> has meant that many people have lost track of the fact that most unix
> config changes do _not_ require reboots.  the debian "oops, your keys 
> are 15b
> not 1024" fixes definitely didn't need a reboot, but the distros focus 
> on making a linux act like windows, so...

Rationale: Why do I reboot after the weekly apt-get update && apt-get 
dist-upgrade of my *testing* home system ?
Every now and then, something important gets updated (e.g. a "minor" 
kernel upgrade, that also tends to reset your carefully thought out grub 
config, etc.

I want to know that that's happening right after it has been changed.

If you run into this sort of configuration file hell 3-4 months after 
the updates were made, you have *no* chance remembering what happened.

Oh, and for those who still do not understand why I run testing:  I 
installed Debian stable (as of April last year) on my new quad core, 4 
Gbyte RAM, 640 Gbyte disk hardware bought in December (the last time I 
installed such a system, I had a Cray engineer on site :-).

No problem.  However, it was woefully out-of-date to do any GCC 
development on it *by that time*.

Hence my need for Debian testing.

-- 
Toon Moene - e-mail: toon at moene.indiv.nluug.nl - phone: +31 346 214290
Saturnushof 14, 3738 XG  Maartensdijk, The Netherlands
At home: http://moene.indiv.nluug.nl/~toon/
Progress of GNU Fortran: http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2008-01/msg00009.html