CHECKRESTART(8)

NAME
checkrestart - help to find processes that need restarting after upgrade

SYNOPSIS
checkrestart [-v] [-M core] [-N system] [-W swap]

DESCRIPTION
checkrestart is a program designed to help to find processes that need restarting after upgrade.

checkrestart walks thought entire file table of the system, searching for processes VTEXT node detached from filesystem.

By default, checkrestart will output pid and executable name of these running processes.

The options are as follows:

-v  Verbose mode. checkrestart will additionally output inode and mount-point of unlinked node.

-M core
    Extract values associated with the name list from the specified core instead of the running kernel.

-N system
    Extract the name list from the specified system instead of the running kernel.

-W swap
    When not using the running kernel, extract swap information from the specified file.

The typical use case is:

•   starts a long lived program.

•   later, upgrades your packages via pkg_add -u.

•   if the program is updated on disk, the running program is still the previous one (without security fixes for example).

•   checkrestart will tell you which processes belong to this category.

SEE ALSO
fstat(1)

HISTORY
The name checkrestart comes from a similar tool from Debian that relies on lsof(1) for achieving the same purpose.

AUTHORS
-nosplit checkrestart was written by Sebastien Marie <semarie@online.fr>.

CAVEATS
Only VTEXT nodes are reported by checkrestart. Some programs using old libraries aren't reported due to lack of support in kernel.