New to the forum. I am running Debian and want to schedule a shutdown every night at midnight. Is this an appropriate method to accomplish this.

I would name the script /etc.con.daily/myshutdown.

I intended to use this line and romove the -r shutdown -r now

I did not see this line in my crontab.
" 02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily"

Here are the instructions I was intending to use. Thanks for your help!

Prerequisite -login as root
Prerequisite -Daemon crond up and running
1. Create the restarting script in /etc/cron.daily, the daily run script directory, using a text editor.

a. Lauch the, say, vi editor to create the restarting script, say, myrestart by typing:

vi /etc/cron.daily/myrestart

b. Type the following content and save:

#!/bin/sh
echo daily scheduler by S K Yuen>/root/schedule.log
date>>/root/schedule.log
shutdown -r now

2.Edit the cron configuratiuon file

a. Edit the cron configuratiuon file /etc/crontab by typing

vi /etc/crontab

b. remark the following line by put a #:
From

02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily

To

#02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily

c. To set cron to run the restarting script file, say, myrestart at 05:25AM, add the following line:

25 05 * * * root bash /etc/cron.daily/myrestart

d. save the file and exit the editor.

A more appropriate way would be:

First of all, put the script in cron.d instead, and call it restart. That way there is no need to comment out the daily part.
Then run chmod 755 /etc/cron.d/restart, to make it a proper executable script.
Then I believe you can just add
00 00 * * * root /etc/cron.d/restart
to crontab, so it will run at midnight. I may be wrong about the time format, but hey, yours was set to 05:25 in the morning.