How does Ubuntu keep track of the "System restart required" flag in motd?
- by Anders Lindahl
I have a few Ubuntu servers (8.10, 9.10) that is set to automatically install security updates. Some times these updates requires a restart of the system, and this string is shown in motd:
*** System restart required ***
To get a notice about these, I plan to write a Nagios test to monitor if the server is in need of a reboot. So, my question:
Is there a better way than parsing /etc/motd to find out if a reboot is needed?