For those that haven't signed up to the status page feed (which you should!) read this. http://status.linode.com/incidents/2dyvn29ds5mz

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There is a 2 hours window allocated.

For such a global upgrade, can we expect the reboot to happen at the very beginning of that 2 hours window, based on your experience?

What Linode normally do is sometime at the start of the window all nodes on the hosts will be shutdown. Then they'll patch the host, reboot it and start bringing up the nodes. Nodes are staggered when booting up so how long your downtime will be will depend on where you land in the queue.

I don't work for Linode so can't say that's what will happen but it's an educated guess Linode are very good at handling these issues so I wouldn't worry just be patient and have a read of this https://www.linode.com/docs/uptime/rebo ... ival-guide

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Related question: How do we ensure that our machines will be "cleanly shut down" from the outside?

When using Debian under KVM and virt-manager at home, I need the acpi-support-base and acpid packages to be installed so that the "shutdown" menu works. Surprisingly, this package was not installed by default on my first linode Debian 7 deployment. Is Xen different about this?

The mechanism should be identical to when you use the Shut down or Reboot buttons in the Linode Manager (or the automated shutdowns during a migration or upgrade, for that matter). So if you wanted, you could run a test in advance when convenient on your own schedule to ensure your Linode will do the right thing during such a shutdown/reboot cycle. But yes, for me such shutdowns (whether manually by me or automatically by Linode) has always been a graceful shutdown assuming the guest was operating properly in the first place.


I'm guessing here, as I don't know for sure, but Linode uses Xen PV for its guests, so I expect the PV drivers are shutting down the guest from within the guest itself. It's not simulating an external hardware signal to generic drivers; rather the Xen aware drivers execute a shutdown on your behalf.

-- David

We send a control-alt-delete (CAD) signal to your init process - which, in all distros I've ever seen, is configured to begin a shut down. In the case a Linode is misbehaving or doesn't exit after 2.5 minutes, we then issue a flush/sync and pull the virtual plug.

-Chris

Really just a comment....

It is interesting that the notice in the Linode Manager is less than useful....

Nice to know what my default timezone is set to, but what is the actual time of the outage?

Just received notice via email, which lists the times in UTC. So what is the point of telling me my default timezone if the notification is using UTC anyway?

One of my Linodes is getting less than 24 hour notice. That is a bit unusual. The other is 5 days out, which makes it easier to notify clients involved.

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Kevin a.k.a. Dweeber

The time is different for each Linode, and as per the big yellow banner, each will be worked on "at the time listed below".

Look in the table of Linodes?

- Les

don't mind me... I am blind. I didn't notice the extra column maint times in the list of linode for some reason...

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Kevin a.k.a. Dweeber

Can anyone who has had the maintenance done to their Linode comment on how long the downtime lasted? I understand it's scheduled for 2 hours but the actual downtime can be much less. Thanks.

For me this morning 9am MST, it was about 30-35 mins. I brought down my Linode myself and powered it up when the dashboard said complete rather than letting them shut it down and bring it back up. Might have been a bit faster as I wasn't watching the dashboard every minute.

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Kevin a.k.a. Dweeber

I've had one so far, it was down 15 minutes. Fully automatic and no problems.

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Good to hear, thanks for the info!

Here goes!!

All appears okay and back up 45 minutes after a brief message about a hardware failure during maintenance.