bird3 package upgrades - graceful restart?

[David Petera]

Hi,

do you guys by any chance have the utility `needrestart` on your system?
 From what I was able to find it is sometimes used to extend `apt` with 
exactly this auto-restart functionality.

If you do have it installed and `sudo cat 
/etc/needrestart/needrestart.conf | grep {restart}`
outputs `$nrconf{restart} = 'a';` then it is this utility restarting the 
BIRD deamon.

If not, we need to look into it further :)

Thanks,
David

David Petera (he/him) | BIRD Tech Support | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o.

On 1/5/26 15:49, Christoph via Bird-users wrote:
> Maria Matejka via Bird-users:
>>     At the same time in the log shows the restart without manually
>>     triggering it:
>>
>>     Jan 05 11:51:47 Stopping bird.service - BIRD Internet Routing
>>     Daemon… Jan 05 11:51:52 bird.service: Deactivated successfully. Jan
>>     05 11:51:52 Stopped bird.service - BIRD Internet Routing Daemon. Jan
>>     05 11:51:52 bird.service: Consumed 49min 40.707s CPU time, 1.3G
>>     memory peak. Jan 05 11:51:52 Starting bird.service - BIRD Internet
>>     Routing Daemon… Jan 05 11:51:52 Started bird.service - BIRD Internet
>>     Routing Daemon.
>>
>> That’s weird. I have no idea how this happened to you. We don’t 
>> request for the restart anywhere. Will run tests and check whether we 
>> can replicate this behavior on our side.
>
> Oh interesting also Debian 14 Trixie here.
> One more information: During the upgrade apt asked me whether I want 
> to replace /etc/bird/bird.conf because it changed upstream in the 
> usual ncurses interface. I selected 'keep the current configuration' 
> or similar.
>
> If there are other testers that can confirm what I'm seeing 
> (autorestart on upgrade), please join.
>
> thanks!
> Christoph