[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk 1.0.9 long term stability <--threadhijack, why not reboot?

[canuck15]

Just my opinions but....

A PBX should not require reboots EVER.  Traditional proprietary PBX's don't
require reboots and if Asterisk does then it has problems and is not ready
to be a viable alternative IMHO.

I am sure that some people will say they know of some proprietary PBX's that
do require reboots.  My response would be that my 'expectation' for ANY PBX
and even servers in general is NO REBOOTS.  I don't think that is
unreasonable.

This opinion has NOTHING to do with the whole Linux vs Windows Jihad.  That
is a whole other argument.  I am strictly talking about PBX's regardless of
if they are Linux or Windows or traditional proprietary or whatever.
Rebooting at 3am everyday just because you can should not justify permitting
the existance of problems that require it in the first place.  I hope that
makes sense. :)

Again, just my 2 cents.

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Anderson [mailto:ColinA at landmarkmasterbuilder.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2005 9:34 AM
To: 'Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion'
Subject: RE: [Asterisk-Users] Asterisk 1.0.9 long term stability
<--threadhijack, why not reboot?

Disclaimer: Not a troll

I'm curious as to this obsession with uptime is. All of the posts of this
type are along the lines of "After X days, Y thing does not work but if I
reload or reboot, it's OK" - so why not cron a reboot? Is it considered bad
form or something like that? I reboot every night whether it is needed or
not, not afraid to admit it, and everything works fine for me. 

We also do the "Sunday reboot" of all of our Windows servers as well as
restarting all of the critical services such as IIS , SQL, Exchange etc
nightly. It helps, a lot (Exchange is a notorious memory leaker)

Of course, if your install processes calls 24/7 that's a different story.
However, I expect that the majority of Asterisk installs are for a 9-to-5
type of operation. We run two shifts here, and we stop processing calls at
10 PM, and start again at about 6 AM - a large window of opportunity to
reboot. Why not take advantage of it?

I've also heard it said, something along the lines of: "If you have to
reboot, your server isn't set up correctly" to which I say piffle. Even NASA
has rebooted the Mars probes after they land and I understand that they run
VXWorks, incidentally, the same RTOS that my Mitel 3300 uses, and *even
Mitel* recommends periodic reboots, which we duly cron every night, 2 AM. 

24/7/365 installs aside, is there a reason why reboots seem to be frowned
upon? Again, not trolling, just curious.