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.

  • AnarchoAnarchist [none/use name]English
    8•6 months ago

    It depends on what you’re hosting.

    If this is a big site that experiences a lot of traffic, You should already have more than a single Web server anyway. If this is a website for a school or an organization, You really should have a load balancer and a couple web notes. In that situation upgrading and rebooting, draining traffic and bringing it back in, is fairly trivial.

    If this is a home server, where you’re the only real user, just reboot it.

    Some distros like Ubuntu are better about fixing the security issues without requiring rebooting, but if it’s a home web server the uptime is really not important.

  • Thordros [he/him, comrade/them]English
    13•6 months ago

    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. kris-dance

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]OPEnglish
      8•6 months ago

      Like a load balanced situation? Unfortunately, no. The app supports only a single server setup.

      • blame [they/them]English
        5•6 months ago

        Not necessarily load balanced I suppose but say spinning up a new server and switching over using dns or something could work too. Then you keep both running while the first one drains. If thats not possible idk probably put up a notice on your site and do it at like 2am on a weekday

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]OPEnglish
      13•6 months ago

      I usually just restart it with systemd.

      Edit: Initial D should be a nickname for the systemd init system.

  • Zvyozdochka [she/her, pup/pup's]English
    6•6 months ago

    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/1.22.1

    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.

  • Ossay [he/him]English
    5•6 months ago

    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

  • Owl [he/him]English
    5•6 months ago

    I just do it whenever my package manager says to do it after the monthly sudo apt upgrade. Which is most months, but sometimes it doesn’t, so I don’t.

    Ten minutes of downtime a month isn’t a big deal.

  • PorkrollPosadist [he/him, they/them]English
    13•6 months ago

    A lot of times I’ll run apt-get update / apt-get upgrade on 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.