shutdown8

Usage

Overview

shutdown may be used to halt, power off, or reboot the machine.

The first argument may be a time string (which is usually "now"). Optionally, this may be followed by a wall message to be sent to all logged-in users before going down.

The time string may either be in the format "hh:mm" for hour/minutes specifying the time to execute the shutdown at, specified in 24h clock format. Alternatively it may be in the syntax "+m" referring to the specified number of minutes m from now. "now" is an alias for "+0", i.e. for triggering an immediate shutdown. If no time argument is specified, "+1" is implied.

The time string specifies the earliest point in time the shutdown may take place; it is a lower bound only: the shutdown is executed as soon as possible, but not before the specified time. Specifying a time that already elapsed (for example an "hh:mm" time earlier today) is not an error and results in an immediate shutdown. See the discussion of --when= in systemctl(1) for details.

Note that to specify a wall message you must specify a time argument, too.

If the time argument is used, 5 minutes before the system goes down the /run/nologin file is created to ensure that further logins shall not be allowed.

Options

The following options are understood:

--help

Print a short help text and exit.

-H, --halt

Halt the machine.

-P, --poweroff

Power the machine off (the default).

-r, --reboot

Reboot the machine.

-h

The same as --poweroff, but does not override the action to take if it is "halt". E.g. shutdown --reboot -h means "poweroff", but shutdown --halt -h means "halt".

-k

Do not halt, power off, or reboot, but just write the wall message.

--no-wall

Do not send wall message before halt, power off, or reboot.

-c

Cancel a pending shutdown. This may be used to cancel the effect of an invocation of shutdown with a time argument that is not "+0" or "now".

--show

Show a pending shutdown action and time if there is any.

Added in version 250.

Exit status

On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise.

Compatibility

The shutdown command in previous init systems (including sysvinit) defaulted to single-user mode instead of powering off the machine. To change into single-user mode, use systemctl rescue instead.