checkrestart(1)
NAME
checkrestart - check which processes need to be restarted after an
upgrade
SYNOPSIS
checkrestart [ -hv ]
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outdated versions of libraries in use, particularly after security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.
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.
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.
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 dependant on lsof could improve this, however.
SEE ALSO
AUTHOR
checkrestart was written by Matt Zimmerman for the Debian GNU/Linux
distribution.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
Copyright (C) 2001 Matt Zimmerman <mdz@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.