checkrestart(1) 						  debian-goodies						   checkrestart(1)

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       Consequently, checkrestart is sometimes used as an audit tool to find outdated versions of libraries in use,  particularly  after  security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

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 pro-
       cesses. 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)