System Restart Required Linux

When I first started building web servers using Linux I would run into the following message that would display whenever I SSH’ed into the server, and didn’t understand why I needed to restart the computer:

*** System restart required *** 

Why do I need to restart the server? What does this message mean?

I found out that you can see the outstanding updates that need to be installed by viewing the following file /var/run/reboot-required.pkgs. You can read this file via the command line by using the following command:

cat /var/run/reboot-required.pkgs

Here’s an example of what you might see in that file:

libssl1.0.0
linux-base

Typically, these updates are security patches and need to be updated immediately to prevent any potential issues. So, I would recommend rebooting your machine, either using your hosting company or directly via running the following command:

sudo reboot

The server should reboot and you should no longer see that message.