shutdown -h now -- why leave power on?

Jonas Sundström jonas at kirilla.com
Sat Oct 1 07:25:57 PDT 2005


David Cuthbert wrote:
> Something I've always wondered (and been a bit
> annoyed with)... why does "shutdown -h now" respond
> with:
>
> Shutting down ACPI
>
>    The operating system has halted.
>     Please press any key to reboot.
>
>
> I realise this is a BSDism, but I've never understood the
> point. Why not keep ACPI running and instruct it to shut 
> down the machine? Amongst other things, it makes it 
> easier to do a remote power cycle with WoL (and other
> situations where you might not necessarily have a 
> keyboard attached).

As others have pointed out, shutdown -p is what you want.

In NetBSD on Sun hardware with OpenBoot firmware
"shutdown -h now" gets you back to the firmware prompt.
The OS halts and you're dropped in "BIOS", so to speak.
It works over serial too, so you can use it headless.

I believe Solaris works this way too, but I haven't tried it myself.

I really like the Sun Blade 100, but I'm extra sensitive to noise,
so it's got to go. :I

/Jonas Sundström.                 www.kirilla.com






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