SHUTDOWN(8)						      System Manager's Manual						       SHUTDOWN(8)

NAME

       shutdown - close down the system at a given time

SYNOPSIS

       shutdown [ -k ] [ -r ] [ -h ] [ -f ] [ -n ] time [ warning-message ... ]

DESCRIPTION

       Shutdown  provides an automated shutdown procedure which a super-user can use to notify users nicely when the system is shutting down, sav-
       ing them from system administrators, hackers, and gurus, who would otherwise not bother with niceties.

       Time is the time at which shutdown will bring the system down and may be the word now (indicating  an  immediate  shutdown)  or	specify  a
       future time in one of two formats: +number and hour:min.  The first form brings the system down in number minutes and the second brings the
       system down at the time of day indicated (as a 24-hour clock).

       At intervals which get closer together as apocalypse approaches, warning messages are displayed at the terminals of all users on  the  sys-
       tem.   Five minutes before shutdown, or immediately if shutdown is in less than 5 minutes, logins are disabled by creating /etc/nologin and
       writing a message there.  If this file exists when a user attempts to log in, login(1) prints its contents and exits.  The file is  removed
       just before shutdown exits.

       At  shutdown  time a message is written in the system log, containing the time of shutdown, who ran shutdown and the reason.  Then a termi-
       nate signal is sent to init to bring the system down to single-user state.  Alternatively, if -r, -h, or -k was used,  then  shutdown  will
       exec  reboot(8), halt(8), or avoid shutting the system down (respectively).  (If it isn't obvious, -k is to make people think the system is
       going down!)

       With the -f option, shutdown arranges, in the manner of fastboot(8), that when the system is rebooted the file systems will not be checked.
       The -n option prevents the normal sync(2) before stopping.

       The  time  of  the shutdown and the warning message are placed in /etc/nologin and should be used to inform the users about when the system
       will be back up and why it is going down (or anything else).

FILES

       /etc/nologin   tells login not to let anyone log in

SEE ALSO

       login(1), reboot(8), fastboot(8)

BUGS

       Only allows you to kill the system between now and 23:59 if you use the absolute time for shutdown.

4th Berkeley Distribution					 November 16, 1996						       SHUTDOWN(8)