In the last couple of days, $SUBJ has hit me twice, so I had to wonder
if I could somehow prevent it?

Hardware is a Nano Pi Neo Air, which I access via ssh. 

first I patched a 15.2 Leap system, and when wpa_supplicant was updated,
output over ssh just stops, although the process continues on the ARM
board. ���(verified via a serial console). 

just now, I was running a zypper dup from 15.1 to 15.2, and the same
thing happens. ���wpa_supplicant is installed, network is interrupted.

Over the serial console, I can tell the wlan interface is down, which
explains what happens. ���

I don't always have the luxury of having a serial console attached, so
updating could leave me with no access to the ARM board. ���I need to fix
a few things after the zypper dup, so I need to retain the network
access - any suggestions? 

In reply to my posting above, Andrei Borzenkov suggested:

On update wpa_supplicant runs systemctl try-restart
wpa_supplicant.service. Workarounds are

- globally disable restart of any service (see /etc/sysconfig/services,
DISABLE_RESTART_ON_UPDATE)

- set YAST_IS_RUNNING=instsys before running zypper (affects all
packages in this zypper run)

Irrespectively I would open bug report to discuss whether wpa_supplicant
should be exempt from restarting on update. D-Bus is ...