Why You Shouldn't Reboot Unix Servers

You-Should not Reboot Unix Servers without a good reason. Rebooting Windows boxes when something is not right is a way of life. Article When in doubt, reboot? Not Unix boxes explains why you should almost never reboot a Unix server. Server reboots should be rare — very rare.

In many cases, it’s extremely important not to reboot, because the key to figuring out the problem is present on the system before the reboot.The problems usually recur, and if the only known solution is to reboot, then the problem will never be fixed unless or until someone decides not to reboot and instead tries to find the root of the problem.

When you find out that you have some problem on your server, the first idea is to figure out a good strategy how to find out what the problem is. A little bit thinking will easily get you to figure out a way to go though the system in the order which will not destroy the evidence of the problem.

This Unix advice applies also to Linux servers. Too often they are treated almost as badly (reboot when something goes wrong) as Windows PCs. Linux boxes could as well handled in the same way as Unix servers.