difference between output of "yum ps" and "needs-restarting"?

[Georg Wittig]

Hi,

can anyone please explain the difference between the output of
      yum ps                (from the RPM yum-plugin-ps)
and
      needs-restarting      (from the RPM yum-utils)

I couldn't find many infos about those 2 commands.

[Bill Davidsen]

Georg Wittig wrote:
> Hi,
>
> can anyone please explain the difference between the output of
>       yum ps                (from the RPM yum-plugin-ps)
> and
>       needs-restarting      (from the RPM yum-utils)
>
> I couldn't find many infos about those 2 commands.

I'll take a whack at clarifying.

yum ps - tells you what packages are associated with which processes. Can be 
used before the fact to determine if doing that update is a good idea.

needs-restarting identifies (after update) processes using packages (typically 
libraries) which have been updated.

Is that enough?

[Bill Davidsen]

Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Georg Wittig wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > can anyone please explain the difference between the output of
> >       yum ps                (from the RPM yum-plugin-ps)
> > and
> >       needs-restarting      (from the RPM yum-utils)
> >
> > I couldn't find many infos about those 2 commands.
>
> I'll take a whack at clarifying.
>
> yum ps - tells you what packages are associated with which processes. Can be
> used before the fact to determine if doing that update is a good idea.
>
> needs-restarting identifies (after update) processes using packages (typically
> libraries) which have been updated.
>
> Is that enough?

NOTE: I discovered what I think is a bug in needs-restarting, when started as a 
normal user it runs for some time before going out with permission issues. If it 
were mine I would check for root at the start and give a user-friendly "you need 
to be root to run this package" message.

Since it's a matter of taste (I like to avoid user questions) not function, I 
guess I shouldn't report it, but ugly.

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

On Fri, 2013-03-29 at 23:29 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Georg Wittig wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > can anyone please explain the difference between the output of
> >       yum ps                (from the RPM yum-plugin-ps)
> > and
> >       needs-restarting      (from the RPM yum-utils)
> >
> > I couldn't find many infos about those 2 commands.
>
> I'll take a whack at clarifying.
>
> yum ps - tells you what packages are associated with which processes. Can be 
> used before the fact to determine if doing that update is a good idea.

Trying "yum info yum-plugin-ps" we get:

When this plugin is installed it adds the yum command "ps",
        which allows you to see which running processes are accociated
        with which packages (and if they need rebooting, or have
        updates, etc.)

Ignoring the glaring spelling error, this seems to imply that it also
detects packages which have been updated and would affect running
processes (rather like needs-restarting).

"yum ps" on its own appears to do nothing. A look at the source
indicates that for a complete listing you need to do "yum ps all" (as
root of course), while "yum ps foo*" restricts output to packages (or
is it processes?) starting with "foo". However as far as I can see this
doesn't work. IOW not only is there no usable documentation, but the
source comments are wrong.

This stuff really needs to be documented. Same goes for
needs-restarting.

poc