needrestart - Man Page

• List outdated processes: needrestart
• Interactively restart services: sudo needrestart
• List outdated processes in [v]erbose or [q]uiet mode: needrestart -v|q
• Check if the [k]ernel is outdated: needrestart -k
• Check if the CPU microcode is outdated: needrestart -w
• List outdated processes in [b]atch mode: needrestart -b
• List outdated processed using a specific [c]onfiguration file: needrestart -c path/to/config
• Display help: needrestart --help

tldr.sh

needrestart checks which daemons need to be restarted after library upgrades.

Usage:

needrestart [-(v|q)] [-n] [-c <cfg>] [-r <mode>] [-f <fe>] [-u <ui>] [-(b|p|o)] [-kl]

-v

be more verbose

-q

be quiet

-m <mode>

set level of technical details

  e

(e)asy mode

  a

(a)dvanced mode

-n

set default answer to 'no'

-c <cfg>

config filename

-r <mode>

set restart mode

  l

(l)ist only

  i

(i)nteractive restart

  a

(a)utomatically restart

ATTENTION: If needrestart is configured to run in interactive mode but is run non-interactive (i.e. unattended-upgrades) it will fallback to list only mode.

-b

enable batch mode

-p

nagios plugin mode: makes output and exit codes nagios compatible

-o

OpenMetrics output mode: output information that can be scraped by OpenMetrics-compatible services. Implies batch mode. By combining with any of `-l`, `-k` and `-w` you can decide whether the metrics will expose outdated libraries, kernel and microcode, respectively. Note that in order to list system-wide outdated libraries, needrestart needs to be run as root. When listing outdated libraries, a gauge-type metric exposes the number of running processes with such outdated libraries. When exposing kernel or microcode metrics, each one will expose a StateSet-type metric which indicates the current status. Kernel and microcode will also each expose an additional Info-type metric which informs of the versions of the current vs expected kernel or microcode.

-f <fe>

override debconf(7) frontend, sets the DEBIAN_FRONTEND environment variable to <fe>

-t <seconds>

When checking running interpreter processes, allow process start times that are close to timestamps of files the interpreter uses, within this tolerance (default 2). The default value of 2 seconds is best for checks of Linux hosts, on which system limitations prevent more accurate measurements of process start times. Values higher than 0 should prevent false positives yet may in extreme cases cause false negatives; values higher than 2 should not be necessary.

-u <ui>

use preferred UI package (-u ? shows available packages)

By using one of the following options only the specified checks are performed:

-k

check for obsolete kernel

-l

check for obsolete libraries

The following environment variables can be used to override the config file options. Command line parameters do always supersede them.

NEEDRESTART_MODE

Change the configured restart mode (see also the -r parameter): (l)ist only, (i)nteractive or (a)utomatically

When used with apt-get(8) needrestart supports the following additional environment variables:

DEBIAN_FRONTEND

The debconf(7) frontend to use, can also set using the -f parameter.

NEEDRESTART_SUSPEND

If set to a non-empty value the apt-get(8) hook will not run needrestart after installing or updating packages.

Thomas Liske <thomas@fiasko-nw.net>

2013 - 2022 (C) Thomas Liske [http://fiasko-nw.net/~thomas/]

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 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

https://github.com/liske/needrestart