OS updates and 7.3.6

[billford]

Apple have just released an update for my OS (to OS X 10.8.4).

I'm a bit cautious with OS updates at the best of times, and always make sure I've got a return path if anything goes belly-up. I was thinking of using the "Finish" option on the current slot, waiting until the client stopped, installing the update, then re-starting.

Any comments for/against/why bother?

[Jesse_V]

That seems like a safe route. Sure, why not. Since the client would be between Work Units when you update, there's no possibility of losing a WU. Of course, it's entirely possible that the update won't touch the FAH installation at all, but there's no penalty for using the Finish option. So go ahead and use it I'd say.

[billford]

Well, if we ignore the minor detail that, about 2 minutes before it finished, my internet connection went down for half an hour so that I could neither upload the completed WU or download the OS update, everything went swimmingly

(Peering issue, apparently)

One thing I didn't expect- after I rebooted, the client downloaded a new WU and re-started automatically. Not a problem, just unexpected.

Is this normal behaviour? I'd expected the "Finish" to cause it to stay paused, even through a re-boot, until I restarted it manually.

[bruce]

The client is expected to go back to work after a reboot. Finish is not a permanent setting. There's an open ticket suggesting that it might be changed in some future version but there are pros and cons. I think that most of the time it's used exactly the way you did .... complete the current WU so that whatever I do won't disrupt anything related to FAH... go back to folding after rebooting.

By default, after a reboot, FAH is going to start folding immediately. You can change that default, but then it's always going to NOT start folding after a reboot.

[billford]

OK, thanks for that.

I can see the reasoning, and can't really imagine it ever causing me a problem, but as a general thing I think most people would expect that if they manually stopped a program then it would stay stopped until they re-started it again... reboot or no reboot!

Just my four penn'orth.

[bruce]

This has been the topic of many discussions including: #396
It's not so simple, though: #961