package management – How can I tell, from the command line, whether the machine requires a reboot? – Ask Ubuntu

Jovan Stosic March 13, 2017

When you install certain updates (e.g. a new kernel) in Ubuntu Desktop, you get an indication that a reboot is required (in Lucid, the logout icon turns red).

How can I check, from the command line, whether an Ubuntu server requires a reboot?

I could grep for ‘System restart required’ in /etc/motd, but I’d like a solution that’s more elegant. Also, I want a solution that works in older releases, e.g. Hardy (8.04 LTS).

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If you are maintaining server you will soon also develop sense wether or not update require restart. Most updates needs no restart or only restart of service (witch it should do automatically). – eXlin Nov 18 ’10 at 11:45

7 Answers

up vote199down voteaccepted

You can simply check if the file /var/run/reboot-required exists or not.

For example, any of these would tell you “no such file” or “file not found” if you do not need to reboot, otherwise (if you need to reboot) the file would exist and these commands would show information about the file:

file /var/run/reboot-required
stat /var/run/reboot-required
ls /var/run/reboot-required

In a bash script, you can use:

#!/bin/bash
if [ -f /var/run/reboot-required ]; then
  echo 'reboot required'
fi
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1
This works, and it works on Hardy too. (Doesn’t work on Dapper — 6.06 — which I still have on one machine. Tough.) Incidentally, the /var/run/reboot-required file is created by /usr/share/update-notifier/notify-reboot-required which is invoked from various packages’ maintainer scripts. – Marius Gedminas Jul 29 ’10 at 14:23
1
It would work on Dapper too if I installed the update-notifier package, except that it wants to pull down 120 megs’ worth of GNOME stuff into my ancient server. – Marius Gedminas Jul 29 ’10 at 14:27
9
Better install update-notifier-common, it doesn’t depend on any GUI stuff (but doesn’t exist for Dapper). – Marius Gedminas Jul 29 ’10 at 14:35
1
FWIW, update-notifier-common is not installed on Lucid server by default. – Marius Gedminas Jul 29 ’10 at 14:37
1
Thanks! and the file /var/run/reboot-required.pkgs will list the packages that require the reboot.– nealmcb Feb 22 ’15 at 17:21

up vote35down vote

In the package debian-goodies is a command named checkrestart which is quite useful. Its output can help you avoid a full reboot.

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How can it make me avoid a full reboot? – Oxwivi Sep 9 ’11 at 15:03
8
It tells you, which running applications have loaded shared libraries that were upgraded while the application was running. You then restart the applications and services manually and avoid a full reboot. Does not help with kernel upgrades, though. – aquaherd Sep 15 ’11 at 20:38
This should be the top answer. Very helpful. OpenSUSE got a tool built-in (and also helps you how can you run it). Shame Ubuntu just goes “restart, restart”. For example colord needed a restart here. Hence, no need to restart. – Shiki Mar 11 ’13 at 14:22

up vote28down vote

Normally if the file

/var/run/reboot-required

exists you should reboot. You can see if this file is there by using this simple command in gnome-terminal.

ls /var/run/reboot-required
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up vote16down vote

Aswell as the most direct methods written by others there is a handy indication if you use byobu – a set of scripts to make GNU screen a little more user friendly. It shows a set of information at the bottom of the screen, and that can include whether a reboot is required – along with whether updates are available, the time, uptime, memory used …

In this screenshot you can see from the 199! on the bottom line with the red background that there are 199 updates available, and the ! means that some are security updates. The menu in the foreground is selecting which status notifications should be displayed.

If a reboot is required then this will be indicated by the symbol (R) displayed in the lower bar with white text on a blue background. More details and other indicators can be read about in thebyobu man page.

byobu screenshot

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up vote8down vote

The /etc/motd file gets its information about whether a reboot is required from /var/run/reboot-required file.

You can check the content of this file in terminal by using cat /etc/motd command

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up vote3down vote

If you have the reboot-notifier or update-notifier-common packages installed, then you get the files /var/run/reboot-required and /var/run/reboot-required.pkgs

reboot-notifier is newer in Ubuntu Wily and Xenial. Debian stretch, but in jessie-backports

update-notifier-common Is older, in all Ubuntu versions including Xenial and Debian Wheezy. Not in Debian Stretch or Jessie.

( There is some background to the reboot-notifier package athttps://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/introducing-reboot-notifier/ )

If you don’t have these packages installed then you can compare the version of the linux package installed, with the version running:

tim@tramp:~$ dpkg -l linux-image-*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                              Version               Architecture          Description
+++-=================================-=====================-=====================-=======================================================================
ii  linux-image-3.16.0-4-amd64        3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u4 amd64                 Linux 3.16 for 64-bit PCs
ii  linux-image-amd64                 3.16+63               amd64                 Linux for 64-bit PCs (meta-package)
tim@tramp:~$ more /proc/version
Linux version 3.16.0-4-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.8.4 (Debian 4.8.4-1) ) #1 SMP Debian <b>3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u3</b> (2016-01-17)

You can see here that the latest installed kernel is 3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u4 but the kernel running is 3.16.7-ckt20-1+deb8u3. So this system needs a reboot. The u4 vs u3 right at the end.

You might need to scroll the box above. In the /proc/version, it is the version near the end of the line that matters.

The very minor version code change is typical of a Debian security kernel update

Source: package management – How can I tell, from the command line, whether the machine requires a reboot? – Ask Ubuntu

package management – How can I tell, from the command line, whether the machine requires a reboot? – Ask Ubuntu was last modified: July 13th, 2017 by Jovan Stosic