Introducing a poweroff(8) command

[Brian Somers]

On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 23:52:32 +0200, "Cyrille Lefevre" <clefevre-lists at 9online.fr> wrote:
> "Brian Somers" <brian at Awfulhak.org> wrote:
> > On Sat, 21 Aug 2004 23:22:52 +0300, Giorgos Keramidas
> <keramida at ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
> > > On 2004-08-21 22:16, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida at freebsd.org> wrote:
> > > > Hi guys,
> > > >
> > > > In response to PR misc/70476 about `halt -p' I wrote a simple patch to
> > > > introduce a "poweroff" command that will default to "halt -p" behavior
> > > > and inhibit the need for changing the default behavior of halt(8).
> > > >
> > > > o Does this look ok to you all?
> > > >
> > > > o Should I suggest using it as a workaround of the behavior
> > > > described in the PR?
> > >
> > > It would be nice if I also included the patch :-?
> >
> > IMHO poweroff should behave like ``shutdown -p now'' rather than ``halt -p''.
> 
> 
> no, poweroff usually behaves as "halt -p", not "shutdown -p".
> see Solaris and NetBSD for details.

This does seem to be true, and in fact, Linux's poweroff is also ``halt -p''.
The unusual thing about linux is that without the -f option,
halt/reboot/poweroff will call shutdown (this is where I got the assumption
that ``poweroff'' was equivalent to shutdown)!

I don't think it's a good idea to encourage users to use shutdown methods
that don't run the rc.d scripts, but I also don't think we should deviate
from what others do without good reason!

So I'll just take my oar back out and apologise for getting it wrong!

-- 
Brian <brian at Awfulhak.org>                        <brian@[uk.]FreeBSD.org>
      <http://www.Awfulhak.org>                   <brian@[uk.]OpenBSD.org>
Don't _EVER_ lose your sense of humour !