I'm a newbie user, but I want to learn how linux works. I had Mandrake 10 installed then it messed up. So i reinstalled. Now I can't shut down from KDE, so I decided 'hey i'll learn bash'. so when I type 'shutdown now' it get

so then I type shutdown now again and it goes into runlevel 1, then the TERM signal, then it check consoles 1-5 for a picture and changes all the consoles status's to on, it sends the TERM signal again, then gives me the previous quote.

I'm a newbie so anything you ask me to do, if it could be in steps and explained that would be greatly appreciated.

You need to add an extra parameter, depending on whether you want to shut the machine off or reboot it:

shutdown -h now
(h for halt - turns the machine off if you have power management)
shutdown -r now
(r for reboot... 'nuff said)


To learn more about a command, try either "man shutdown" or sometimes "info shutdown". You'll see you can use -k to play a practical joke on everyone using your computer too

Now I feel really stupid, I've typed the command shutdown multiple times, and I've read all the parameters, yet I never got that you had to add anything else. Now, for another probably very obvious and stupid question. Can you run shutdown -h now as a regular user, or do you have to be root?

I believe you do need to be root to run it successfully, although most setups include a shutdown command as the "ctrl-alt-delete" handler in /etc/inittab. The only catch here is that you have to be in console mode (so if you want to reboot your system without logging in as root, press ctrl-alt-f1, then ctrl-alt-delete).