[Gllug] Shutting down Linux?

[Chris Ball]

On Sun, Dec 09, 2001 at 01:13:10PM +0000, James.Rocks at equant.com wrote:
> Windows (anything) can shutdown the OS from GUI straight to "off" and I was
> about to ask if there was a way (or utility) that can completely shutdown
> Linux from my GUI desktop.

Without switching to root?  Logout and then System{Shutdown} from your
display manager's menu.  Or shutdown -h now/halt from a root shell or 
setuid script.

> However ... would such a command take precedence over all other Linux
> activities i.e. what would happen if such acommand were run and some other
> (important?) task were running? Is there a better way to achieve this?

It'll send TERM and KILL signals to everything running; a sensible app
will die after doing some cleanup functions.  Running shutdown -h now as
root will take 'precedence', of course.

Just a shutdown -h now will not work when you're logged in to your GUI -
you won't be root, and won't have any authority to shut down the system.
Use your display manager (which runs setuid) or a setuid shell script.

- ~C.
-- 
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