bird3 package upgrades - graceful restart?

[Maria Matejka]

Hello!

On Mon, Jan 05, 2026 at 12:36:19AM +0100, Christoph via Bird-users wrote:

> Therefor we are curious whether a bird3 package update will
> interrupt packet forwarding on a BIRD3 BGP router?

The package update does not restart BIRD by itself. One must do it
manually or scripted themselves.

> For example now with the current pending update
> 
> apt list --upgradable
> bird3/trixie 3.2.0-cznic.1~trixie amd64 [upgradable from:
> 3.1.5-cznic.1~trixie]
> 
> Should we manually run
> "birdc graceful restart"
> before running "apt upgrade"
> or is this done automatically on package upgrades?

You should probably switch the order, i.e. first install the new binary
and then run the restart.

I have no idea whether systemd could execute different variants of
restart and shutdown, but if it is possible to do so, we might extend
our service file in order to execute the restart/shutdown gracefully,
regularly or by killing the daemon.

Or set the behavior by an env var? What do you think?

Have a nice day!  
Maria

-- 
Maria Matejka (she/her) | BIRD Team Leader | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.
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