Hi,

currently server systems installed with the default installation
method tend to keep running programs affected by bugs (incl.
security vulnerabilities): even when package upgrades are applied,
users are unaware that they need to restart the affected services.

Additionally it's hard to tell which services are affected, f.e.
when the security fix is in a shared library.

Please consider shipping needrestart by default - I thus propose
overriding the priority to standard.

I hope needrestart is also fine for desktop installations.

Best,
Chris

Hi,

Chris Hofstädtler <zeha@debian.org> (2026-07-23):

For (my part of) debian-boot@, no objections. I'm definitely not an
elephant but I don't recall the last time we actually added something
to standard, only stuff getting removed from it. I'm adding debian-cd@
for information (and maybe action) accordingly.

That looks like a good question, does it add anything to e.g. specific
package management/upgrade mechanisms, is that a no-op because they
already do their own thing, or could it interfere? (I have needrestart
on my Debian 12 — oops, time flies — laptop, I'm using GNOME there,
but I'm using apt-get for everything sysadmin-related, so I really
have no idea at this point.)


Cheers,

Dear Cyril, et al,

In the past two years, only the following two binary packages:

2026-03-19  manpages-utils
  * Inherited Priority: standard from Source: manpages
  * #1120550 - RFP: manpages-utils --
      Various scripts provided by the Linux man-pages project
  * #1132985 - override: manpages-utils:doc/optional

2026-07-02  openssh-common
  * Inherited Priority: standard from Source: openssh
  * #1070098 - openssh-sftp-server: False dependency on openssh-client

The first was a mistake, and the second is probably unnecessary.

Thank you!
Daniel Lewart
Urbana, Illinois