Package: debian-policy Version: 3.9.8.0 Severity: normal Hi,
Recent systemd security updates ( systemd (232-25+deb9u8) stretch-security; urgency=high, systemd (232-25+deb9u7) stretch-security; urgency=high) require a system reboot to take effect, but the unattended-upgrades did not tell the user to reboot (or auto-reboot). Apparently /var/run/reboot-required is touched to by debian packages to provide notification when an update of the package requires a system reboot to take effect. https://sources.debian.org/src/unattended-upgrades/1.9/unattended-upgrade/#L83 "The Internet" says that it is the postinst script which is supposed to touch /var/run/reboot-required when a reboot is required. If Debian supports user notification when reboot is required (or automatic rebooting) after automatic upgrade then there should be some consistent standard. And that standard should be documented. Someplace. I don't suppose that there are many packages which require a reboot to take effect after update, but they are the important packages. The kernel and libc6 packages trigger reboot notification, but systemd does not. I don't see anything in either debian-policy or the new maintainers guide. (I'm looking at the versions on debian.net, which I presume are up-to-date.) Regards, Karl -- System Information: Debian Release: 9.6 APT prefers stable APT policy: (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-8-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) debian-policy depends on no packages. debian-policy recommends no packages. Versions of packages debian-policy suggests: pn doc-base <none> -- no debconf information