Hi,

does anyone is able to briefly explain me, what is going on when I`m executing

- reboot

and

- shutdown -r now

What is happening in the system then ? Which init is executed by reboot and shutdown command then ?

I would like to fully understand that process.



Cheers

Dlugasx

From `man reboot` on my machine;
Most systems will be in runlevel 3 or 4. When reboot is executed it is mostly calling `shutdown -r`.
http://linux.die.net/man/8/shutdown
http://linux.die.net/man/8/halt (reboot is part of halt)

The "reboot" command invokes the "shutdown" command with the "-r" option, which in turn switches the system to runlevel 6. If you specify no delay ("-t" option) and add "now" instead, the switch will be performed immediately. Switching to runlevel 6 means that a script (or a set of scripts) will be executed in order to bring down the system properly, by stopping daemons, unmounting filesystems and so on.

Look at your "/etc/inittab" in order to see which script is used for a given runlevel. For instance, on Slackware Linux one will see the following line, which points to tho proper script for runlevel 6:

On other distros based on SysVinit the init directory will be "/etc/init.d/". Because scripts are plain text files, it's fairly easy to see what's happening when switching to a given runlevel. You will find everything in the man pages:

http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l...l8_shutdow.htm

http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl8_reboot.htm