Bug#1110221: release-notes: Desktop restarts during upgrade
Richard Lewis wrote:
>>> This can be triggered if you specifically tell needrestart to restart
>>> processes that are usually left un-restarted, but the package
>>> needrestart probably isn't even installed on your machine.
>>
>> Cinnamon desktop on Xorg and I do have install needrestart, which I
>> forgot about, so it's probably that.
>
> should the release-notes tell people to do something to needrestart to
> prevent this happening? or is this a bug in needsrestart?
Needrestart _shouldn't_ do this - it maintains a blacklist of types of
service that shouldn't be automatically restarted, which includes
display managers and so on - but it does allow users to override that
blacklist. It would be useful to know whether Guillermo accidentally
ordered it to shoot him in the foot*, or whether it's weirdly buggy
(you'd think this kind of issue would already have been reported), or
whether it's a complete red herring after all and something else went
wrong.
While I'm trying to imagine a way of testing it, we might as well also
be thinking about what we might say in the Release Notes if necessary.
We do after all have that systemd-run trick lying around if we need
an antidote to offer in section 4.1.5.
Users running GNOME [does it matter whether it's on Wayland? Might
this also apply to KDE?] who have activated [needrestart,
bootsniper-tng, GNOME killing-spree mode...] may wish to protect
themselves against the possibility of an accidentally restarted user
session by running the upgrade from `screen` or `tmux` within a
`systemd-run` wrapper (e.g. `systemd-run --scope --user screen`).
Except I never did really understand how that interacts with GNOME
killing-spree mode, and now I can't find all the Salsa discussions
from back in March.
(* As in the old slogan "Debian GNU/Linux: giving you the power to
shoot yourself in each toe individually!")
--
JBR with qualifications in linguistics, experience as a Debian
sysadmin, and probably no clue about this particular package
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