Shutdown without su

I just press the power button.

The sudoers file would be my second choice.

If you have HAL installed and your user is a member of the "power" group, you should be able to shutdown from the console by running something like this:

dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.freedesktop.Hal /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement.Shutdown

Of course, you may want to create an alias or script to avoid typing so much.

Edit: apart from Shutdown, the following messages may work too: http://people.freedesktop.org/~david...ce-systempower

Sorry, when I wrote "user" I meant just type the account of the user you want to give shutdown privileges to. Then shutdown with "sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now". That's how I've always done it. I'll double-check the syntax of this again when I get off work...

I think these are the conditions needed to get the "Shutdown" option in KDE appearing for a user:
1) The user must be part of the power group.
2) The box boots at inittab run-level 4 (i.e. boots into X or KDE).

If your box starts using run level 3 (the default), and you use the command "startx" to start KDE, the shutdown option would not appear. The only exit option is to exit the session.

I had the same problem with the sudoer's file. I use:

%users localhost=(ALL) NOPASSWD:/sbin/shutdown -h now, /sbin/reboot

@rrbert:
Thanks a lot, now it is working just as I expected.
I altered my sudoers file like this:
%power ALL=NOPASSWD:/sbin/shutdown,/sbin/halt
And use sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now, to shutdown as standard user.

@vik:
It came to me after two trials that I need to change "user" accordingly as you mentioned, and add "%" before groupname from the sample in sudoers file itself.

@gnashley:
I'm referring to username when typing "user" in last post, you must be thinking that I'm referring to "users" group.

@GazL & @dwr1:
Hmm, it feels like you guys tell me to drink from the bottle directly, when I'm trying to ask for a crystal glass to have my red wine... ^_^

@ALL:
Thanks for all of your time and suggestions, Slack could not be more fun and rock-solid without all of you.

/x

Thanks for this extensive reports on shutdown technology.

Me too, I looked for a clear answer to that question a while ago and didn't find such clear (and sometimes not concise at all) bits of CLI help. So I stuck with su.

[Kudos to rg3 for dbus-send --print-reply --system --dest=org.freedesktop.Hal /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement.Shutdown that's my favourite so far. While indeed I havent tried it.]



To cut it short, su is not your ennemy. For those of you that don't like pushing a (sometimes faraway) button, or play with sudoers files, I've always done this:

(which is close to sudo but doesn't require any edit of configs)

su -c 'halt'

And it's in the feeble range of my goldfish-grade brains memory, so I never forget this one.

I know it's not what you asked for, but still simple.
Albeit you have to give the password.


Cheers; I am bookmarking this post for my next install.

Jean-Philippe
http://www.tropicalicecube.net

Well, here's another approach that's only slightly different than some already posted:
Some of the content isn't relevant for this particular issue, but you might find it handy anyway

Note the "reboot" and "halt" aliases defined here:

liberty $ cat /etc/profile.d/local.sh 
# /etc/profile.d/10-local.sh

# This file contains local startup aliases and other such things          
# that are local modifications -- these apply to *all* users

alias "gui=startx -nolisten tcp -- :$(tty | colrm 1 8)"

if [ -e $HOME/.logout ]; then
  if [ ! "$SHELL" = "/bin/bash" ]; then
    alias "logout=. $HOME/.logout;clear;exit"
  else
    alias "logout=. $HOME/.logout;clear;logout"
  fi
else
  if [ ! "$SHELL" = "/bin/bash" ]; then
    alias "logout=clear;exit"                          
  else
    alias "logout=clear;logout"
  fi                                                         
fi                                                         

if [ -e $HOME/.logout ]; then              
  alias "reboot=. $HOME/.logout ; sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now"
  alias "halt=. $HOME/.logout ; sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now"
else
  alias "reboot=sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now"
  alias "halt=sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now"
fi

if [ "$USER" = "rworkman" ]; then                                                                              
  export PATH="${PATH}:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
fi

Now here are the relevant parts of /etc/sudoers:

bash-3.1# grep power /etc/sudoers 
%power	ALL=(ALL)	NOPASSWD:/etc/acpi/actions/s2disk.sh
%power	ALL=(ALL)	NOPASSWD:/etc/acpi/actions/s2ram.sh
%power  ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD:/sbin/shutdown -h now
%power  ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD:/sbin/shutdown -r now

Result: I can type "halt" or "reboot" as my normal user account, and the aliases defined in /etc/profile.d/local.sh cause the sudo commands to be invoked.