restartable

List running processes using files deleted by recent upgrades

When upgrading packages, the package manager won't restart services or programs that depend on some updated library, for obvious reasons. This has security implications in the case of outdated libraries still in use.

OpenSUSE has a cool zypper ps command to check for programs and services using deleted files. It's also available in other distros as zypp-CheckAccessDeleted from the libzypp package. Those commands parse lsof output and check /proc/<pid>/cgroup to extract the service names.

Here's a Go version that checks /proc/<pid>/maps, extracting information from other files in /proc/<pid>.

No lsof dependency needed.

Excerpt from zypper manual:

After each upgrade or removal of packages, there may be running processes on the system which continue to use meanwhile deleted files. zypper ps lists all processes using deleted files, together with the corresponding files, and a service name hint, in case it’s a known service. This gives a hint which services may need to be restarted after an update. Usually programs which continue to use deleted shared libraries. The list contains the following information:

PID	ID of the process
PPID	ID of the parent process
UID	ID of the user running the process
Login	Login name of the user running the process
Command	Command used to execute the process
Service	Service name, if command is associated with a system service
Files	The list of the deleted files

Usage

Usage of ./restartable:
  -P, --proc string   proc directory (default "/proc")
  -s, --short count   Create a short table not showing the deleted files. Given twice, show only processes which are associated with a system service. Given three times, list the associated system service names only.
  -u, --user          show user services instead of system services
  -v, --verbose       verbose output
  -V, --version       show version and exit

Examples

• Restart system services after upgrade

sudo restartable -sss | while read service ; do systemctl restart "$service" ; done

• Restart user services after upgrade

sudo restartables --user -sss | while read service ; do systemctl restart --user "$service" ; done

Be careful because depending on the service you may lose connection or get kicked out of your login session.

NOTES

• You must run it as root to see information about other processes
• The output is different from zypper ps to be easily parseable

Similar projects

• needrestart: Plugin used by Debian/Ubuntu systems
• checkrestart: FreeBSD port

FreeBSD / DragonflyBSD / NetBSD version

bsd

Solaris version

solaris