Specifically, a dedicated server running Debian 12.
After a monthly sudo apt upgrade? (Is a monthly upgrade even necessary?)
Never? (unless there is a security update?)
Edit: I may be missing kernel upgrades. Those are probably good... I can't remember if I installed a LTS kernel. I imagine it would be unsecure to post an exact kernel version, however.
bring back old forums that had a weekly scheduled reboot that was always the same but you would always forget about and panic for 10 seconds and be about to email the webmaster before remembering
(ok it was more about reindexing sql databases than updating the actual server kernel)
If there's a serious security bug, like Heartbleed, you should totally update and reboot the service. That is basically the only "must" for staying atop things. The rest is mostly personal preference.
In my job I maintain publically exposed Linux servers, and many of them don't get rebooted for years. I think our record is about five years.
Yes, if you want your server to be theoretically the rootinest tootinest securest setup ever, you should update about every 6 hours, but even then you're just more vulnerable to repo attacks (which have happened a few times lately). Apt upgrade every month or three is probably good practice to keep on top of bugs.
So really, how frequently do you need to reboot? Eh. So long as it works, there are no critical kernel vulnerabilities, and updates are available, I really would argue you should never "have" to.
Servers are horses for courses, if you're being heavily targeted by hackers, obviously stay on top of updates, but if your server is pootling along without harassment and doesn't contain life-altering stuff if it got leaked, then don't worry too much. A standard, barely-changing, 'stable' build is usually a very secure one.
It really depends. I've seen servers that reboot every 24 hours as well as servers that are constantly up. I would say to reboot every kernel or systemd upgrade
A lot of times I'll run
apt-get update/apt-get upgradeon my server and there will be no updates to install. I only reboot if there is a new kernel or something. Otherwise, I can just restart whichever services are directly impacted by the updates.Debian Stable is a rock. Nothing ever changes. I do recommend subscribing to the debian-announce and debian-security-announce mailing lists though.
I just go to the lil power strip and flick the the lil removed power button when I go to bed, then flick it back on when I wake up. It keeps the kids off the Wifis when we're supposed to be sleeping.
I was the "tech guy manager" for my regional office, for a major telecommunications company, for a non-trivial amount of time. Meritocracy in action, folks.
I usually just restart it with systemd.
Edit: Initial D should be a nickname for the systemd init system.
I only really restart if there's a kernel update because I'm too lazy to do all the setup for live patching. If there's an update for something like Nginx, I restart the service after updating it. I try to stay on top of updates, especially security ones, for obvious reasons.
server: nginx/x.x.x
I also personally disable this, it's not really too important, but it's a little security by obscurity thing. Makes people scanning the internet for a specific (possibly vulnerable) version of Nginx a little bit harder.
You should upgrade for security updates every six hours and reboot on every kernel upgrade
