Just done a upgrade on my debian (sarge) box and I normally use Gnome when I log in but I thought I would give KDE 3.3 a try. So, I updated the box and all seem to work fine until I wanted to shutdown my linux box. I noticed that I dont have the option of shutting down. I see the options to log out and lock but no shutdown. Currently I have to enter the terminal window and perform the "shutdown -h now" command to shut my box completely off. I have been on google trying to find something pertaining to this but I dont find my particular problem. Has anyone else seen this with KDE 3.3. I figured it had something to do with permissions since you can't sign in as root on a debian box.

Hello, by default clicking on logout should provide a small window with three options: 1. End current session 2. Turn off computer 3. Restart Computer.

If for some reason clicking logout just brings you back to your login manager then you need to go to the Control centre --> KDE Components --> Session Manager and check the box "Offer shutdown options"

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the feedback on my question. I verified that I had that checked after reading your response and I have noticed that if I logout I can return back to the default gnome manager (even though I use KDE) and I can go to the top and select a drop down menu and actually turn the machine off. I just find it crazy that I dont have the option to shutdown after I click on the KDE icon. I guess that must be some kind of security feature that keeps a user from shutting the machine down at will. Thanks for your input..help is always appreciated.

perhaps if you were using KDM and not GDM, the KDE shutdown options would be more extensive/available? This is just supposition however.

You should use KDM instead of GDM if you want to directly shutdown from KDE.

The shutdown/reboot options are only available within the display manager.

In general, in Linux, normal users have no permissions to shutdown or reboot the machine (through commands). The shutdown and reboot commands would be unavailable as a normal user. However, as a normal user you can still reboot a system using the keyboard.

The reason is simple. Linux is a multi-user Operating system - imagine if you were running an ssh session of a remote machine - you can easily shutdown that machine if you were given this permission to run these commands.