Re: System broken after full-upgrade: please help!
On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 9:29 AM, The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On 08/10/2014 09:26 AM, Tom H wrote:
>> On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 8:46 AM, The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm>
>> wrote:
>>> On 08/10/2014 02:45 AM, Bonno Bloksma wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If halt or reboot is called when the system is not in runlevel
>>>> 0 or 6, in other words when it's running normally, shutdown will
>>>> be invoked instead (with the -h or -r flag). For more info see
>>>> the shutdown(8) manpage.
>>>
>>> That's weird, and if it represents a change made by systemd,
>>> possibly unfortunate. I know of at least one somewhat degenerate,
>>> but broadly distributed and not uncommonly used, environment (which
>>> I think may be based on SuSE) where 'shutdown' does not work at all
>>> - exits with an error when called - but 'halt' and 'reboot' do
>>> work. (And probably so does 'poweroff'.)
>>
>> halt/poweroff/reboot have called shutdown at least since 6/squeeze.
>
> Ah, so that may be a Debian-specific behavior, rather than an upstream
> one?
>
> That might explain the discrepancy, if so.
>
> If not, perhaps the environment in question is simply using older
> versions of those tools, which do not yet invoke 'shutdown'...
It's in the BSDs that halt&co don't call shutdown. It's been called in
sysvinit for a long time.
This is the halt man page from the upstream sysvinit 2.75 release,
which was in hamm (debian 2.0). Take a look at the "NOTES":
HALT(8)
Linux System
Administrator's Manual
HALT(8)
NAME
halt, reboot, poweroff - stop the system.
SYNOPSIS
/sbin/halt [-n] [-w] [-d] [-f] [-i] [-p]
/sbin/reboot [-n] [-w] [-d] [-f] [-i]
/sbin/poweroff [-n] [-w] [-d] [-f] [-i]
DESCRIPTION
Halt notes that the system is being brought down in the file
/var/log/wtmp, and then either tells the kernel to halt, reboot or
poweroff the system. If halt or reboot is called when the system is
not in runlevel 0 or 6, shutdown(8) will be invoked instead
(with the flag -h or -r).
OPTIONS
-n Don't sync before reboot or halt.
-w Don't actually reboot or halt but only write the wtmp
record (in the /var/log/wtmp file).
-d Don't write the wtmp record. The -n flag implies -d.
-f Force halt or reboot, don't call shutdown(8).
-i Shut down all network interfaces just before halt or reboot.
-p When halting the system, do a poweroff. This is the
default when halt is called as poweroff.
DIAGNOSTICS
If you're not the superuser, you will get the message `must be
superuser'.
NOTES
Under previous sysvinit releases, reboot and halt should never
be called directly. From this release on halt and reboot invoke
shutdown(8) if the system is not in runlevel 0 or 6.
AUTHOR
Miquel van Smoorenburg, miquels@cistron.nl
SEE ALSO
shutdown(8), init(1)
Feb 24, 1998
HALT(8)
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