• [gentoo-user] needrestart - exclude services

    From Joost Roeleveld@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 13 09:50:01 2025
    Hi all,

    After upgrading my system, I always run "needrestart".
    This works, mostly, fine. But sometimes I don't pay enough attention
    and accidentally allow a critical service to be restarted, causing the
    server to become unstable.

    One of this is "multipathd", which is required for the filesystems.
    Another is "xenstored" (which has obvious issues with all the VMs running)

    I am unable to find any config files, but am hoping I can add services
    like this to some exclude-list somewhere.
    Can someone point me in the right direction?

    Many thanks,

    ---
    Joost

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Peter Humphrey@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 13 13:10:01 2025
    On Thursday, 13 March 2025 08:45:12 Greenwich Mean Time Joost Roeleveld wrote:
    Hi all,

    After upgrading my system, I always run "needrestart".
    This works, mostly, fine. But sometimes I don't pay enough attention
    and accidentally allow a critical service to be restarted, causing the
    server to become unstable.

    One of this is "multipathd", which is required for the filesystems.
    Another is "xenstored" (which has obvious issues with all the VMs running)

    I am unable to find any config files, but am hoping I can add services
    like this to some exclude-list somewhere.
    Can someone point me in the right direction?

    Many thanks,

    I didn't know about needrestart, so I installed it. 'man needrestart' lists a -c option to specify a config file, but no details. I haven't trawled through / usr/share/doc/needrestart-* ; have you looked there?

    --
    Regards,
    Peter.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Joost Roeleveld@21:1/5 to All on Thu Mar 13 12:20:01 2025
    Joost Roeleveld wrote:
    Hi all,

    After upgrading my system, I always run "needrestart".
    This works, mostly, fine. But sometimes I don't pay enough attention
    and accidentally allow a critical service to be restarted, causing the
    server to become unstable.

    One of this is "multipathd", which is required for the filesystems.
    Another is "xenstored" (which has obvious issues with all the VMs
    running)

    I am unable to find any config files, but am hoping I can add services
    like this to some exclude-list somewhere.
    Can someone point me in the right direction?

    Many thanks,

    ---
    Joost

    I don't know if this will help or not. I use checkrestart to find
    services or programs that need to be restarted after updates. This is
    the needed info if you want to try it. It's in a overlay.

    I used to use checkrestart until it was removed from the gentoo-tree
    (due to lack of maintenance/updates)
    I then switched to needrestart and actually prefer this.
    It actually checks the processes instead of what was updated.

    Which means the part you showed doesn't actually trigger restart
    requirements as reinstalling the same version won't mark processes as
    running outdated versions.

    It also shows me if there is a new kernel or microcode (CPU)

    needrestart doesn't restart by default either. It asks, setting the
    default to Y or N depending on if a service can cause run-time issues.
    My problem is, the "possible issues" list doesn't seem to be
    configurable. Or if it is, I can't find it.

    --
    Joost

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)