shutdown: Shutdown is the process of stopping important processes and "cleaning up" before turning off the power. Shutdown is a Linux command, some common variants:

• shutdown -r, now -- Shutdown now, then reboot
• shutdown -h, now -- Shutdown now, then halt in preparation for a power shutoff
• shutdown -h, ??? -- Shutdown for a power off 15 minutes from now.

sync is one of the important processes that must be run prior to a shutdown (and other times, like before a disk is unmounted) -- it takes any data that belongs on disk but which is cached in RAM, and writes it to the disk (Is "flush buffers" a correct description??)

There is also a series of keyboard shortcuts for performing a shutdown, all prefixed with <alt><sysreq>. See:

• http://www.linux-mandrake.com/en/doc/81/en/ref.html/ts-system-freeze.html

Contributors

• RandyKramer - 02 Feb 2002
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