Re: "Service restarts being deferred"

[Jesper Dybdal <jd-debian-user@dybdal.dk>]

On 2020-12-19 21:05, Kushal Kumaran wrote:
> > > Jesper Dybdal wrote:
> > > > I run Buster with unattended updates configured to allow reboots.
> > > >
> > > > Sometimes after an update, the log contains:
> > > > > Service restarts being deferred:
> > > > > ??systemctl restart systemd-logind.service
> > > > > ??systemctl restart unattended-upgrades.service
> >From the documentation of Automatic-Reboot, it only has effect for
> updates that result in the /var/run/reboot-required file being created.
>
> For service restarts, the needrestart configuration would be a better
> place to start.  The comments in /etc/needrestart/needrestart.conf are
> instructive:
>
>      # do not restart oneshot services, see also #862840
>      qr(^apt-daily\.service$) => 0,
>      qr(^apt-daily-upgrade\.service$) => 0,
>      qr(^unattended-upgrades\.service$) => 0,
>
>      # don't restart systemd-logind, see #798097
>      qr(^systemd-logind) => 0,
>
> Do go through those bug reports and experiment at a safe time before
> changing things here.
Thanks.  Those bug reports explain why those services are not simply 
restarted, which seems very sensible.

But the "deferred" restarts seem to be deferred indefinitely, until the 
next reboot.  So I still don't quite understand why an automatic reboot 
is not scheduled in order to get those services restarted.
(Unless it is, strangely, the "Reboot with users" setting that has some 
influence here, even though there are no logged in users in my case.)

--
Jesper Dybdal
https://www.dybdal.dk