[Mageia-dev] latest kernels not powering off machines on shutdown

Fri Aug 10 21:27:50 CEST 2012

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012, Pascal Terjan wrote:
+
+> On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 7:04 PM, Jose Jorge <lists.jjorge at free.fr> wrote:
+>> Le 09/08/2012 20:10, Thierry Vignaud a écrit :
+>>
+>>> I've the impression that for some time, kernels do not power off machines
+>>> anymore on shutdown.
+>>> The kernel prints "System halted." but the machine remains powered.
+>>> I've seen that with VMs and with real PCs.
+>>>
+>>> Does someone else see that?
+>>
+>> Yes, and some other distros do the same (at least Slitaz). Before Mageia 2,
+>> there was no interest in having both halt and poweroff doing the same.
+>>
+>> Now, we can do "poweroff" to cut the power after stopping the kernel, or
+>> "halt" to keep  the power on.
+
+As I said earlier, if you are looking for these system shutdown commands, 
+use:
+   systemctl reboot
+   systemctl halt
+   systemctl poweroff
+directly. The "halt, "reboot", and "poweroff" commands are only there for 
+backwards compatibility.
+
+> How many people expect their machine to power off when they type halt?
+> How many people will want their machine to not halt and not poweroff?
+>
+> Said in another way:
+> - How many people will this change cause problem to?
+> - How many people will benefit from it?
+>
+> I would expect the ratio to be about at least 99.9/0.1 which is why I hate it.
+>
+> This change seem to be done without any consideration for users.
+
+So fix it, no change to systemctl is needed AFAICT, just replace the 
+symlink with a tool that does "the right thing", probably running 
+"poweroff" passing all arguments verbatim. Don't forget to fix the 
+manpage as well.
+
+
+     Christiaan
+