[rescue] Rebooting UNIX boxen (was: Fry's)

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

Man, *none* of y'all are doing very well at changing
subjects to match content...even mrbill, who said:

> What I hate is having to *repeat*, at work:
> 
> "This is a UNIX box.  You dont just "reboot" it when things dont work;
> you stop and restart services or applications.  UNIX boxes should in
> all reality only be rebooted once a year, and then only if you're
> paranoid..."

Just so I can take advantage of the glorious collective experience
of other folks around here:
 - I try to update patch clusters on all the Suns I'm responsible
   for (both personal and work systems, almost all running
   Solaris) at least once a month, or when a major new compromise
   (esp. remote) becomes known.  (Not very many services are
   exposed to the outside world, and those that are, I watch
   carefully)
 - Depending on how I feel, I *sometimes* follow Sun's advice
   and re-boot after applying the patch cluster.  I just discovered,
   however, that a lightly-used Solaris 2.5.1 system had 234
   days of uptime--and I decided I needed to reboot it.

So how long will y'all let a Solaris box go without rebooting
after a patch cluster install?  On most non-proprietary UNIXish
systems, installing an updated software package will also stop
and start the service--but from what I can tell it *doesn't* on
Solaris.  Suggestions?

  --Rip