What do other groups do about updating applications and machines
with long running processes ?

My users run two sorts of long running processes, with different
problems when it comes to updates.

First, I have users who never log off. Thus applications like
firefox and pdf viewers will be running when they are updated.
Some time later these applications may try to load and run plugins
which have been removed/updated.

Second, I have users with long running calculations (often weeks
or more) which would be interrupted if the machine were rebooted into 
an updated kernel. User-writing code often check-points, so the 
actual calculation time lost is not significant, but calculations in
commercial packages such as Mathematica and Maple are often less good 
about check-pointing.

How do people balance the disruption of killing user processes
against the need to update to the latest versions of software ?

Thanks,

-- 
Dr. Andrew C. Aitchison		Computer Officer, DPMMS, Cambridge
[log in to unmask]	http://www.dpmms.cam.ac.uk/~werdna