After rebooting for updates, reboot is still required.

[Barry Kolts]

Yesterday unattended-upgrades required a reboot for kernel updates as expected. But today unattended-upgrades required a reboot even though there were no updates.

2016-09-20 05:20:10,409 INFO Initial blacklisted packages:
2016-09-20 05:20:10,410 INFO Initial whitelisted packages:
2016-09-20 05:20:10,411 INFO Starting unattended upgrades script
2016-09-20 05:20:10,411 INFO Allowed origins are: ['o=Ubuntu,a=xenial-security', 'o=Ubuntu,a=xenial-updates']
2016-09-20 05:21:13,118 INFO Packages that will be upgraded: linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic linux-libc-dev
2016-09-20 05:21:13,119 INFO Writing dpkg log to '/var/log/unattended-upgrades/unattended-upgrades-dpkg.log'
2016-09-20 05:24:17,405 INFO All upgrades installed
2016-09-20 05:24:24,959 WARNING Found /var/run/reboot-required, rebooting
2016-09-21 05:10:54,080 INFO Initial blacklisted packages:
2016-09-21 05:10:54,088 INFO Initial whitelisted packages:
2016-09-21 05:10:54,089 INFO Starting unattended upgrades script
2016-09-21 05:10:54,089 INFO Allowed origins are: ['o=Ubuntu,a=xenial-security', 'o=Ubuntu,a=xenial-updates']
2016-09-21 05:11:02,624 INFO No packages found that can be upgraded unattended and no pending auto-removals
2016-09-21 05:11:02,624 WARNING Found /var/run/reboot-required, rebooting

On this machine (16.04 server) unattended-upgrades is configured to reboot automatically.

This also happened on another 16.04 server with default unattended-upgrades configuration. It displayed the *******System restart required******* message. The same on a 14.04 server and a 14.04 desktop.

Expected behaviour: Not to do an unnecessary reboot.

Let me know what other information I can provide.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The file /var/log/apt/history.log might be useful in sorting out why the file still exists. Could you please add it as an attachment?

[Barry Kolts (bhkolts)]

Brian,
File attached.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

The autoremove would have created the reboot-required file.

Start-Date: 2016-09-20 06:56:26
Commandline: apt autoremove
Requested-By: barry (1000)
Remove: linux-image-extra-4.4.0-34-generic:amd64 (4.4.0-34.53), linux-headers-4.4.0-34-generic:amd64 (4.4.0-34.53), linux-headers-4.4.0-34:amd64 (4.4.0-34.53), linux-image-4.4.0-34-generic:amd64 (4.4.0-34.53)
End-Date: 2016-09-20 06:56:55

Do you have a '/var/run/reboot-required.pkgs' file? If so does it contain anything?

[Barry Kolts (bhkolts)]

Brian,
I don't have that file as it was removed by the reboot, but I do believe it said "Linux base", same as the day before.

[Alexandre Cavaco (alexcavaco)]

Hello,

Brian, I do have that '/var/run/reboot-required.pkgs', it's contents are simply:

linux-base

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

@Alexandre - Could you add your /var/log/apt/history.log entries from before the reboot-required.pkgs file was created?

In Barry's case I believe the reboot-required was created because of running 'apt autoremove' which removed older kernels and triggered a run of update-initramfs.

[Alexandre Cavaco (alexcavaco)]

Sure Brian, here it is.

I think my case was exactly the same, as I also did a 'apt-get autoremove'.

But, the strange think is that the reboot file vanished and the system is no longer asking me for reboots (probably since yesterday), but I didn't do anything specific to try to solve the problem.

[Barry Kolts (bhkolts)]

Brian,
This weekend we had updates for libssl and a libssl regression. Both required a reboot and no second reboot. In other words worked as expected.

Perhaps the bug only occurs for kernel updates. I have had this happen a few times in the past. So the next time it happens I will not run autoremove manually, to see what happens.
What files and logs can I provide at that time that will help?

[Barry Kolts (bhkolts)]

Brian,

Yesterday we had kernel updates. My server, which is set to automatically reboot, reboot fine and no /var/run/reboot-required. This morning there was no second reboot, so everything was as expected. The I ran autoremove to remove the stale kernel. Then I had /var/run/reboot-required and /var/run/reboot-required.pkgs contained linux-base. So I wouldn't think removing a kernel should require a reboot. So is this a bug or am I not understand how this should work?

I confirmed this on a second 16.04 server

Attached are the /var/log/apt/history.logs from before autoremove and after.

[Barry Kolts (bhkolts)]

And the after autoremove log