On Debian there is also the tool checkrestart available, it is part of the debian-goodies package. This might be useful if a reboot is (currently) not possible.

On Debian there is also the tool checkrestart available, it is part of the debian-goodies package. This might be useful if a reboot is (currently) not possible. apt-get install debian-goodies Then you can run: checkrestart And it will list services which require a restart. For example: service sudo restart service ssh restart service cron restart service ... On Debian 8 (Jessie) i had to restart the systemd services as well: systemctl daemon-reexec systemctl restart systemd-journald systemctl restart systemd-logind