Arch Linux

kcy29581

Member

From: CA

Registered: 2004-12-23

Posts: 231

How to know when a system needs to be updated due to process updates?

Hi all,

I want to understand when I'm supposed to reboot my Arch server. I've been reading up on these forums, and googled, and the obvious tests came out:

• When the kernel gets updated

• When files that processes use, are updated/deleted

The kernel one is easy. just compare the values of the following two commands, and check if the versions are the same

$ find /boot/vmlinuz-linux
$ uname -a

For the processes, I'm not sure how this would work.
openSUSE uses

$ zypper ps

Ubuntu/Debian users check if the following file exists

/var/run/reboot-required

Fedora has

$ yum needs-restarting

How can I do the equivalent in Arch?

Last edited by kcy29581 (2015-10-22 08:47:50)

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There is no spoon in Arch...

graysky

Wiki Maintainer

From: :wq

Registered: 2008-12-01

Posts: 10,597

Website

Re: How to know when a system needs to be updated due to process updates?

I don't think so but am interested to hear from others... updates to the nfs-utils package can also require a restart in my experience.

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CPU-optimized Linux-ck packages @ Repo-ck  • AUR packages • Zsh and other configs

ukhippo

Member

From: Non-paged pool

Registered: 2014-02-21

Posts: 366

Re: How to know when a system needs to be updated due to process updates?

I use the script from https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 5#p1425075 to list the processes needing restart and then use my own judgement.
Services like httpd and cups I can just use systemctl to restart (some require stop and start).
"User" programs I can just exit (and restart).
But "core" services like systemd require a reboot.
If there are a lot of processes, I reboot (laziness on my part )

kcy29581

Member

From: CA

Registered: 2004-12-23

Posts: 231

Re: How to know when a system needs to be updated due to process updates?

For me, it's the one missing missing from pacman, that other package managers provide. Pretty weird.

Forces me to reboot after a bunch of updates, because I don't know what to look for.

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There is no spoon in Arch...

x33a

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2009-08-15

Posts: 4,587

Re: How to know when a system needs to be updated due to process updates?

I reboot daily, so this is not an issue for me. But if you are using Arch for a server, then it does become an issue.

As a rule of thumb, I tend to reboot (if I need the newer package immediately for some reason) for the following: kernel, systemd, glibc.

Last edited by x33a (2015-10-24 10:51:01)