Provided by: debian-goodies_0.88.1ubuntu1_all bug

NAME

       checkrestart - check which processes need to be restarted after an upgrade

SYNOPSIS

       checkrestart [ -hvpanmt ] [ -b blacklist_file ] [ -i package_name ] [ -e pid ]

DESCRIPTION

       The checkrestart program tries to determine if there are processes in the system that need
       to be restarted after a system upgrade. This is necessary since an  upgrade  will  usually
       bring  new  system libraries and running processes will be still using the old versions of
       the libraries. In stable Debian GNU/Linux systems this is typically needed to eliminate  a
       system  exposure  to  a  vulnerability  which might have been fixed by upgrading a library
       which that process makes use of.

       Consequently, checkrestart is sometimes used as an audit tool to find outdated versions of
       libraries  in  use,  particularly  after  security  upgrades.  Administrators  should not,
       however, rely on its output completely (see BUGS below).

       This script needs to run as root in order to obtain the information it needs for analysis.

OPTIONS

       -h,  --help
              Show the program help and exit.

       -v, --verbose
              Generate detailed output. This output includes the  list  of  all  processes  found
              using  deleted  files  or  descriptors as well as the deleted files and descriptors
              found.

       -p, --package
              Only process deleted files that belong to a package, ignoring deleted  files  which
              do not have an associated package in the package system.

       -a, --all
              Process  all  deleted  files regardless of location. This makes the program analyse
              deleted files even  if  they  would  be  discarded  because  they  are  located  in
              locations,  such as /tmp , which are known to produce false positives. It will take
              preceded if used simultaneously with the -p option.

       -m, --machine
              Generate machine readable output. One line is printed per  program  which  must  be
              restarted:  "TYPE:package_name,pid,program".  Where  TYPE  is  INIT  , if a systemd
              service file or an init script is available  to  restart  the  program,  and  OTHER
              otherwise.

       -b file, --blacklist=file
              Read a blacklist of regular expressions from file.  Any files matching the patterns
              will be ignored. More than one pattern can be provided by using  this  option  more
              than once.

       -i name, --ignore=name
              Ignore  services  that  are  associated to the package name provided in name.  More
              than one package can be provided by using this option more than once.

       -e pid, --excludepid=pid
              Exclude processes running with pid when looking for open files. This can  speed  up
              checkrestart  on  systems with a large number of open files. Note: this option only
              works if lsof(8) is not used.  More than one process identifier can be provided  by
              using this option more than once.

       -n, --nolsof
              Do  not use lsof(8) even if available. In some systems where there are large number
              of files the use of lsof might be inefficient. Use this  option  to  disable  lsof.
              Notice  also  that  if  lsof  is  not installed an alternative mechanism to extract
              deleted files will be used instead. Consequently, there is  no  need  to  set  this
              option in systems that do not have lsof(8) installed.

       -t,--terse
              Terse  output,  just  print  the  number of open deleted files and exit with a code
              suitable for use by Nagios and similar monitoring tools (see Exit Status).

EXIT STATUS

       Normally, the program will exit with error (1)  if  a  non-root  user  tries  to  run  it.
       Otherwise, it will always exit with error status 0.

       If the --terse switch is given, the exit code is 1 when there are deleted open files and 0
       when there are none. This is intended for consumption  by  Nagios  and  similar  automated
       monitoring tools.

EXAMPLE

       Start it as user root without parameters:

         # checkrestart
         Found 20 processes using old versions of upgraded files
         (15 distinct programs)
         (14 distinct packages)

         Of these, 12 seem to contain init scripts which can be used to restart them:
         The following packages seem to have init scripts that could be used to restart them:
         gpm:
                 3044    /usr/sbin/gpm
         rpcbind:
                 2208    /sbin/rpcbind
         bind9:
                 8463    /usr/sbin/named
         openssh-server:
                 22124   /usr/sbin/sshd
         ntp:
                 4078    /usr/sbin/ntpd
         tftpd-hpa:
                 3417    /usr/sbin/in.tftpd
         uptimed:
                 2704    /usr/sbin/uptimed
         cron:
                 3019    /usr/sbin/cron
         postfix:
                 22145   /usr/lib/postfix/qmgr
                 8892    /usr/lib/postfix/master
         hddtemp:
                 3174    /usr/sbin/hddtemp
         autofs:
                 2792    /usr/sbin/automount
         openbsd-inetd:
                 3254    /usr/sbin/inetd

         These are the init scripts:
         service gpm restart
         service rpcbind restart
         service bind9 restart
         service ssh restart
         service ntp restart
         service tftpd-hpa restart
         service uptimed restart
         service cron restart
         service postfix restart
         service hddtemp restart
         service autofs restart
         service openbsd-inetd restart

         These processes do not seem to have an associated init script to restart them:
         isc-dhcp-client:
                 3775    /sbin/dhclient

       This is another example to show the machine-readable output:

         # checkrestart --machine
         PROCESSES: 4
         PROGRAMS: 4
         PACKAGES: 2
         INIT:bcfg2-server,6974,/usr/sbin/bcfg2-server
         INIT:exim4-daemon-light,857,/usr/sbin/exim4
         OTHER:aptitude,11679,/usr/bin/aptitude-curses
         OTHER:xscreensaver,6562,/usr/bin/xscreensaver

BUGS

       This  program  might fail if the output of the lsof(8) utility changes since it depends on
       it to detect which deleted files are used by processes. It might also  output  some  false
       positives  depending  on  the  processes'  behaviour  since  it  does not check yet if the
       (deleted) files in use are really libraries.

       If you find a false positive in checkrestart please provide the following information when
       submitting a bug report:

       —      The output of checkrestart using the -v (verbose) option.

       —      The output of running the following command as root:

               lsof | grep -E 'delete|DEL|path inode'

       checkrestart  is  also sensitive to the kernel version in use. And might fail to work with
       newer (or older) versions.

SEE ALSO

       lsof(8), needrestart(8)

       Please note that the needrestart  program  uses  a  different  logic  to  determine  which
       services should be restarted based on deleted files. Results might not be exactly the same
       as those provided by checkrestart

AUTHOR

       checkrestart was written by Matt Zimmerman for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.  It  was
       later  improved  by Javier Fernandez-Sanguino with contributions from many different users
       and developers of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

       Copyright (C) 2001 Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org>
       Copyright (C) 2007,2010-2015 Javier Fernandez-Sanguino <jfs@debian.org>

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the  GNU  General  Public  License  as  published  by the Free Software Foundation; either
       version 2, or (at your option) any later version.

       On Debian systems, a copy of the GNU General Public License version  2  can  be  found  in
       /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL-2.