In defense of Windows Vista's Restart Manager.
In the last week there were three RSS feeds I follow that mentioned the new Restart Manager service in Windows Vista. First, Mary Jo Foley says, "The technology is designed to update parts of the operating system or applications without having to reboot the entire machine." That sentence is slightly misleading because the Restart Manager isn't actually responsible for actually updating anything but we'll get to what the Restart Manager is really all about in a minute.
Comments
- Anonymous
December 10, 2005
Correct if I'm wrong, it's been a while since I dealth with any flavour of *nix.
When you drop to one of the lower run levels all your user mode applications have to be stoped right?
If that's the case what does that happy place really get you?
The comfort that knowing the "reboot cycle" didn't have to touch the BIOS? - Anonymous
December 10, 2005
Ok, I was wrong runlevels 2 and 3 are not as low level as I thought. - Anonymous
December 10, 2005
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December 10, 2005
jws, I agree with most of your points. I can't speak to how Windows became as deeply intertwined as it is but I know people are doing work now to untwist it piece by piece. A long process for sure and interesting to a suprisingly many, so here's to hoping it gets better.
Also, in my mind, a reboot is a reboot. It doesn't matter what level of the software stack caused the reboot, reboots should be avoided. Smaller updatable core operating system just improves your chances of avoiding reboots.
Fundamentally, I agree with your comment about a culture of discipline in UNIX and wish there was more of it in Microsoft (not that disipline is absent, just compromised a bit too often, IMHO). - Anonymous
December 10, 2005
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December 10, 2005
I have some separate concerns about reboots needed for other, possibly more routine, reasons -- like default system locale changes.
I will blog about this soon, myself.... - Anonymous
December 11, 2005
There is something actually akin to runlevel 3 in Windows but to my knowledge we don't take advantage of it for the purpose of updating user-land code: log off and back on. Even at runlevel 3 some services still run on *nix. Maybe it's not completely the same, but close.
The registry value HKLMSYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlSession ManagerPendingFileRenameOperations is not, unfortunately, processed until a reboot and happens very early during start-up. NTFS does allow the in-use file to be renamed and replaced but as Rob points out the application is still using old functionality. In this case the app can simply be restarted but few installer technologies or versions take advantage of that fact and prompt for a reboot if the application was running and not shutdown. - Anonymous
December 11, 2005
Mmm, I really like the fact that Microsoft addresses these reboot-issues, but this whole Restart Manager stuff sounds like it's only targetting the symptoms and not the real cause.
Now, by means of the Restart Manager API, the responsibility will be at the hands of the application developers, who will have to make sure their applications freeze/unfreeze in the right way. I foresee a lot of buggy (third-party) implementations that will probably cause the whole Restart Manager system to fail. Or am I being too pessimistic?
And ofcourse it is cool to have Office 12 shutdown and re-open and remember their previous state, but why would I want to update Office while at the same time typing an important Word document in the first place? I never perform critical updates and continue working with the piece of software to which the update is applied. I always make sure everything is backed up, shutdown all my applications an run the update. Not because the update process forces me to, but it just feels more safe... - Anonymous
December 11, 2005
Leon, while an end-user may not update their own computer while working on, say, a document a user on a corporate network that left a document open overnight might be updated according to the group policy. The idea is that when he or she returns to the office the next morning they won't even realize they've been updated because everything that handles the message reboot manager sends is back in the same (or close, depending on implementation) state. - Anonymous
December 12, 2005
Leon, first the "real cause" is a fundamental design choice in the operating system. There is no way (in the current design) to 100% avoid reboots. The same is true for UNIX. If you update the kernel (of any operating system), you're going to have to reboot. I remember vaguely an embedded OS (maybe QNX?) that was uber-modularized and almost everything (or was it everything?) could be updated without reboot. They made some fundamentally different design decisions there than UNIX and Windows did.
Second, you are being pessimistic but only time will tell if it is overly so. I think the Restart Manager is a good idea that will help in some (maybe many) cases.
In every demo that I've seen, Restart Manager does a better job of detecting/stopping applications and services to avoid a reboot than the Windows Installer alone does today. That seems like goodness to me.
As I noted above, other people are already looking at how to go after other aspects. - Anonymous
December 12, 2005
> The idea is that when he or she returns to the office the next morning
> they won't even realize they've been updated
Hallelujah! I remember working in a corporate environment where they would do updates in the middle of the night and if you happened forget to save/close what you were working on, then too bad - it just rebooted and you lost everything...
One question, you mention the "Reboot Manager API", does this mean that an application has to be specifically designed to handle the reboot manager? How much of it is automatic and how much has to be handled by the application developer "manually"?
It just seems to me that few applications would actually take advantage of the APIs and handle them correctly (because it's a "tax" as Raymond Chen would put it - effort for the developers with no immediate benefits). - Anonymous
December 12, 2005
Dean, check out the Channel 9 video clip I posted. They talk about more Restart Manager details there. - Anonymous
December 15, 2005
> The idea is that when he or she returns to the office the next morning
> they won't even realize they've been updated
If I were a network administrator I wouldn't be too happy about users who keep their machines logged in for the night. A sudden nightly reboot would actually be a nice punishment for them :-)
> because it's a "tax" as Raymond Chen would
> put it - effort for the developers with
> no immediate benefits).
Well, it clearly benefits the user experience, so that should be satisfying for the developer also. Users will expect all of their software to implement Reboot Manager functionality. - Anonymous
December 15, 2005
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December 30, 2005
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March 29, 2006
Hej,
Windows Vista har en ny funktion som vi kallar restart manager. Denna funktion gör det möjligt... - Anonymous
March 30, 2006
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