NAME

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

SYNOPSIS

       checkrestart [ -hvpa ] [ -b blacklist_file ] [ -i package_name ]

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       Consequently,  checkrestart  is sometimes used as an audit tool to find outdated versions of libraries in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.

       -b file,--blacklist=file
              Read a blacklist of regular expressions from file.   Any  files  matching  the  patterns  will  be
              ignored.

       -i name,--ignore=name
              Ignore services that are associated to the package name provided in name.

EXIT STATUS

       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.

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

BUGS

       This program might fail if the output of the lsof 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 | egrep 'delete|DEL|path inode'

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

       A rewrite to make it less dependent on lsof could improve this, however.

SEE ALSO

       lsof(8)

AUTHOR

       checkrestart was written by Matt Zimmerman for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

       Copyright (C) 2001 Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> Copyright (C) 2007,2010-2011 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  may be found in /usr/share/common-
       licenses/GPL.

debian-goodies                                  December 19 2006                                 checkrestart(1)