> unless you restart all of userspace (at which point you might as well just reboot).
I can't speak for FreeBSD, but on my OpenBSD system hosting ssh, smtp, http, dns, and chat (prosody) services, restarting userspace is nothing to sweat. Not because restarting a particular service is easier than on a Linux server (`rcctl restart foo` vs `systemctl restart foo`), but because there are far fewer background processes and you know what each of them does; the system is simpler and more transparent, inducing less fear about breaking or missing a service. Moreover, init(1) itself is rarely implicated by a patch, and everything else (rc) is non-resident shell scripts, whereas who knows whether you can avoid restarting any of the constellation of systemd's own services, especially given their many library dependencies.
If you're running pet servers rather than cattle, you may want to avoid a reboot if you can. Maybe a capacitor is about to die and you'd rather deal with it at some future inopportune moment rather than extending the present inopportune moment.
I can't speak for FreeBSD, but on my OpenBSD system hosting ssh, smtp, http, dns, and chat (prosody) services, restarting userspace is nothing to sweat. Not because restarting a particular service is easier than on a Linux server (`rcctl restart foo` vs `systemctl restart foo`), but because there are far fewer background processes and you know what each of them does; the system is simpler and more transparent, inducing less fear about breaking or missing a service. Moreover, init(1) itself is rarely implicated by a patch, and everything else (rc) is non-resident shell scripts, whereas who knows whether you can avoid restarting any of the constellation of systemd's own services, especially given their many library dependencies.
If you're running pet servers rather than cattle, you may want to avoid a reboot if you can. Maybe a capacitor is about to die and you'd rather deal with it at some future inopportune moment rather than extending the present inopportune moment.