Service Packs; shutting down aleph

• Article Type: General
• Product: Aleph
• Product Version: 16.02

Description:
Can you clarify for us the requirements/expectations about Aleph shutdown when installing service packs?.

1) In the "The Aleph Service Pack" document, there are unambiguous instructions to shut down Aleph while installing a SP. In some specific change descriptions, however, there are explicit instructions to restart specific servers after installation (e.g 16.02 changes 856 and 867). This is confusing because, presumably, there would never be a need to restart a specific server if you assume that Aleph is always shut down while installing the SP..

2) Our earlier experience, before we had seen the "The Aleph Service Pack" document, included several problem-free installations where Aleph was not shut down.

Resolution:
1) The rep_changes have instructions which would be used if you were installing that individual rep_change only. When the rep_change is part of a service pack, the instructions about restarting the server can be ignored for individual changes. The servers will be restarted at the end of the Service Pack process.

2) In regard to the need to shut down aleph ... The service packs all create at least some new executables. And at least a few of these are ones used by the www_server, pc_server, etc. If these servers are running, it is possible that the WWW_MAX_REQUESTS value would be reached or that the pc_server would be refreshed, resulting in some new executables being copied in while other corresponding new ones have not yet been compiled. There would not be any *permanent* damage from this: any problems could be corrected by restarting the server(s) at the end of the process. But users could get an unexpectedly not-working system in the meantime. It would seem better to announce a specific down time in advance.

• Article last edited: 10/8/2013