Bug#1110221: release-notes: Desktop restarts during upgrade
Justin B Rye <[email protected]> Sat, 2 Aug 2025 16:14:35 +0100
| Newsgroups | gmane.linux.debian.devel.documentation |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <aI4rWyYTSQrJjmzy__48642.5311466277$1754147728$gmane$org@jbr.me.uk> |
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!")