SHUTDOWN(8) shutdown SHUTDOWN(8)

shutdown - Halt, power-off or reboot the machine


shutdown may be used to halt, power-off or reboot the machine.

The first argument may be a time string (which is usually "now"). Optionally, this may be followed by a wall message to be sent to all logged-in users before going down.

The time string may either be in the format "hh:mm" for hour/minutes specifying the time to execute the shutdown at, specified in 24h clock format. Alternatively it may be in the syntax "+m" referring to the specified number of minutes m from now. "now" is an alias for "+0", i.e. for triggering an immediate shutdown. If no time argument is specified, "+1" is implied.

Note that to specify a wall message you must specify a time argument, too.

If the time argument is used, 5 minutes before the system goes down the /run/nologin file is created to ensure that further logins shall not be allowed.

The following options are understood:


Print a short help text and exit.

-H, --halt

Halt the machine.

-P, --poweroff

Power-off the machine (the default).

-r, --reboot

Reboot the machine.


Equivalent to --poweroff, unless --halt is specified.


Do not halt, power-off, reboot, just write wall message.


Do not send wall message before halt, power-off, reboot.


Cancel a pending shutdown. This may be used to cancel the effect of an invocation of shutdown with a time argument that is not "+0" or "now".


systemd(1), systemctl(1), halt(8), wall(1)
systemd 249