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Have you restarted your computer this week?

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Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#231

Post by weird-eye-issue »

dv35z wrote: post #107

I have a cron job which restarts my computer every day (Linux Mint Debian edition). I like waking up to a "fresh" computer, and since I know that it will restart every day - this is a "forcing function" to (1) be diligent about saving things that are important, (2) treating browser tabs, random notes, etc as ephemeral, and bookmarking the important stuff. I used to work at an office where we pair-programmed with clie…

Regarding browser tabs you can always just reopen Chrome and press control shift T to get your previous tabs even after a restart

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#232

Post by Dylan16807 »

Gigachad wrote: post #186
hnuser123456 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This feels rather overstated. Your firmware check isn't going to tell you if a repo package installed/updated by your package manager got compromised, which is apparently increasingly common.

It's more relevant on ios/Android where you can't through normal means install malware at the system level. Linux is moving in this direction with immutable OSs and better secure boot support but there isn't an easy way to have a secure linux desktop setup currently.

On phones malware is more restrained by the sandboxing. But now the reboot isn't necessary in the first place.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#233

Post by ordersofmag »

doublerabbit wrote: post #134
simmons wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I remember feeling pride in the stability of my systems when I saw a large uptime. I had a server that had 1000 days of uptime, once. Now when I see a large uptime, I'm terrified of what security patches the kernel may be missing!

8:59PM up 1858 days, 22:51, 1 user, load averages: 1.69, 2.21, 1.60 dblrabbit@cookie:~ $ uname -a FreeBSD cookie.server 12.2-BETA1 FreeBSD 12.2-BETA1 r365618 GENERIC amd64 9:05PM up 1859 days, 13 mins, 1 user, load averages: 1.19, 1.32, 1.39 dblrabbit@mookie:~ $ uname -a FreeBSD mookie.server 12.2-BETA1 FreeBSD 12.2-BETA1 r365618 GENERIC amd64 9:14PM up 245 days, 8:46, 1 user, load averages: 1.26, 0.97, 0.91 dblrabbi…

I had a box set up as NAT (running amazon linux) when we moved from a local datacenter to AWS in 2012. Shut it down last year. It had not been rebooted. Should have grabbed a screen capture of the uptime. Part of me wanted to leave it to reach 5000 days....

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#234

Post by neoCrimeLabs »

sgt wrote: post #162
livingsoft wrote: post #158

I'm with the UNIX old timers on this one; cleanliness is overrated. Life is messy, creation is messy. More uptime means more mess. Uptime is longevity; there are few things more valuable in life than longevity.

Agreed. I put stuff in ~/tmp only to create ~/tmp2 for even more temporary stuff that I don't delete, and so on. I clean up Desktop though as it is in my face.

You reminded me of this story. Windows, not *nix, though.

Years ago my cube-mate was called to support a desktop user who has having problems with their machine that couldn't be fixed remotely. He realized the user's HDD was full, so the first thing he did was clear the user's trash bin. Mysteriously the machine came up with a ton of free space.

The user seemed happy their machine was up. Nor long after, the help-desk called my cube-mate asking what they did to the user's machine; The user couldn't find any of their files that they had organized in the trash bin.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#235

Post by michaelmrose »

Gigachad wrote: post #171
dv35z wrote: post #107

I have a cron job which restarts my computer every day (Linux Mint Debian edition). I like waking up to a "fresh" computer, and since I know that it will restart every day - this is a "forcing function" to (1) be diligent about saving things that are important, (2) treating browser tabs, random notes, etc as ephemeral, and bookmarking the important stuff. I used to work at an office where we pair-programmed with clie…

If your computer has any kind of secure boot / boot chain attestation stuff going on, like all phones do now, rebooting clears out pretty much all malware. Software bugs can put the system in to a bad state which can be abused by malware, but none of it can persist through a reboot since everything is checked and measured from scratch during the boot.

Most methods of persisting state have absolutely nothing whatosoever with kernel or modules which are a powerful way to hide malicious activity but far from the only way to persist state including malicious state. The only sane response to being infected with malicious software is to reinstall everything starting with the OS and scan user files AFTER reinstalling.

It is possible even plausible that you can disinfect many sorts of malware from inside a compromised machine but it is inherently less trustworthy and installing from scratch barely takes any more time.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#236

Post by Dylan16807 »

mmh0000 wrote: post #80
simmons wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I remember feeling pride in the stability of my systems when I saw a large uptime. I had a server that had 1000 days of uptime, once. Now when I see a large uptime, I'm terrified of what security patches the kernel may be missing!

Live Kernel Patching has been around for about 20 years[-1] now. Red Hat Enterprise Linux[1] and Oracle (Enterprise Linux) Unbreakable Linux[2] both use it as a selling point. This feature is still a bit ad hoc because, in most setups, rebooting a system isn't a huge burden and is much simpler than using boutique commands to live-patch it. [-1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice [0] https://www.ksplice.com/ [1] ht…

Live patching exists but it tends to cap out at around a year of updates for any particular kernel version. It's not getting you anywhere near 1000 days.

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#237

Post by iqfareez »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #221

I don't feel like keeping my tower pc running more than necessary. When I don't use it for hours, I usually turn it off. At least when I go to bed I turn it off. Next day I turn it on again. Like a normal person. I don't see a need to save 1 minute or so, by keeping it running.

[dead]

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#238

Post by DANmode »

snailmailman wrote: post #183

I shut down my desktop every night. No reason to keep it on. I can save my work, all my tabs persist, it’s fine. My main complaint is that my PC seems to have crazy clock drift? And windows just doesn’t seem to care? It doesn’t actually cause problems but I will check and see that it’s off by >5 seconds and that just shouldn’t ever happen. My phone is always accurate to <0.05s and same in Linux. Idk why windows isn’t…

Replace the CMOS battery yet?

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#239

Post by sbstp »

h4kunamata wrote: post #212

My Lenovo Legion gaming laptop running Linux Mint Cinnamon takes ~10s to boot. I hardly ever leave it on, I mean why?? It is silly to use a cron job to do something that only takes 2s for a human to do. My homelab Debian Netinst servers tho, run non-stop for months or even years without reboot. Half century ago Linux had a bug where servers had to be rebooted after X hours, that is no longer an issue. Windows however…

Don't you reboot servers to get kernel security updates? I usually have unattended upgrades with the option to reboot during the night if necessary

Re: Have you restarted your computer this week?

#240

Post by AdieuToLogic »

Gigachad wrote: post #171
dv35z wrote: post #107

I have a cron job which restarts my computer every day (Linux Mint Debian edition). I like waking up to a "fresh" computer, and since I know that it will restart every day - this is a "forcing function" to (1) be diligent about saving things that are important, (2) treating browser tabs, random notes, etc as ephemeral, and bookmarking the important stuff. I used to work at an office where we pair-programmed with clie…

If your computer has any kind of secure boot / boot chain attestation stuff going on, like all phones do now, rebooting clears out pretty much all malware. Software bugs can put the system in to a bad state which can be abused by malware, but none of it can persist through a reboot since everything is checked and measured from scratch during the boot.

> Software bugs can put the system in to a bad state which can be abused by malware, but none of it can persist through a reboot since everything is checked and measured from scratch during the boot.

This does not account for supply chain attacks nor trojan attacks which seek consensual installation. A reboot will not eradicate these threat vectors.

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