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Accepted
Yang
Asked: 2012-03-27 16:15:38 +0800 CST

How to determine whether I need to restart due to upgrades on Ubuntu?

  • 772

When I use apt to update my system (e.g. run sudo aptitude full-upgrade) it sometimes installs updates that require reboots. This applies esp. for kernel (security) updates.

I can sometimes see this in the ssh login message. I'm wondering how (else) I may determine whether the system needs a reboot due to these updates.

ubuntu update

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The MOTD "restart required" text is generated by /usr/lib/update-notifier/update-motd-reboot-required, which checks for the existence of and pulls text from /var/run/reboot-required:

    #!/bin/sh -e
#
# helper for update-motd

if [ -f /var/run/reboot-required ]; then
        cat /var/run/reboot-required
fi
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