"shutdown now && poweroff" working without root password

[aguila]

Hi,

I thought

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shutdown now && poweroff was only possible as root, at least that's what I'm told when I enter it in a terminal as user.

In another thread bicol_willem gave me a hint that he places a desktop icon for shutdown, command: "halt"

As my parents already had the issue of the shutdown widget not working three times, I thought this might work. So I created a menu icon, but entered the command

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shutdown now && poweroff.

When I click the entry, a window pops up asking me for the root password. After entering the computer shuts down.

If I click "abort" the system shuts down the same way without asking for the password.

I wasn't able to find out if it really performs the same procedure in both cases.

Is there anyone more knowlagable than me who could explain what is going on? Shouldn't "Abort" bring me back to the desktop?

[Bald Brick]

I haven't tested it but I think it's the shutdown command that asks for your root password. And when you abort, you just abort shutdown, after which poweroff is run -- shutting down and powering off.

Try just using "poweroff".

[aguila]

Thank you for the explanation Bald Brick.

But now I'm completely confused... when should I use "shutdown" if "poweroff" includes "shutdown"? And is there a difference between "poweroff" and "halt"?

Could you point me to a reference where I can read up on this?

TIA

[gseaman]

info poweroff | less

This will give you a scrollable version of the info pages. You can put any command in place of poweroff, if there is an info page for it.

Galen

[Bald Brick]

Thank you for the explanation Bald Brick.

But now I'm completely confused... when should I use "shutdown" if "poweroff" includes "shutdown"? And is there a difference between "poweroff" and "halt"?

Could you point me to a reference where I can read up on this?

TIA

Well, /sbin/poweroff is just a symlink to /sbin/halt.

There's also a /usr/bin/poweroff, which is a link to /usr/bin/consolehelper, as is /usr/bin/halt. I haven't checked what either command actually starts.

A few years ago halt used to be an alias of shutdown -h now. But not anymore.