Weblog entry #50 for simonw
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"postfix check" reported that the chroot copies of various "libnss" libraries were stale. This is readily fixed with "/etc/init.d/postfix restart" (Thanks to Lamont Jones and his excellent packaging of Postfix, which updates the chroot automatically on a restart of Postfix).
However these libraries are in "libc6", and it occurs to me that after updating "libc6", I'm not entirely clear what else might need restarting to ensure it is utilising the latest version of various updates.
My programming days are mostly behind me, but I assume pretty much all running processes depend on libc.so.6, and will thus need restarting. "ldd /sbin/init" - suggests that for a thorough application of the patches, a reboot is mandatory.
Although I'll settle for restarting all Internet exposed services for the moment. We have enough power related outages planned to avoid truely impressive uptimes occurring any time soon.
Or did I misunderstand something basic?
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No, you're not missing anything basic.
I remember several previous libc upgrades where the package installation expressly asked for permission to restart certain services, and then did so.
I'd guess whether a restart is required depends on the nature of the libc6 changes involved in any given upgrade.
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There is the checkrestart script located in the debian-goodies Debian package.
It seems to use ld to see which processes are using old versions of updated libraries.
I have been using this bash alias for a few months now and it behaves very well :
alias updatedistro='su -c "apt-get update && aptitude --with-recommends upgrade && apt-get clean && checkrestart"'
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