Hello All,

I'm using Slackware 12.

I'm trying to give my user permission to shutdown the machine, so that I dont have to logout as user, log back in as root, and then issue:

"shutdown -h now" to get the machine to power off.

HELP!!!!

Have a look at man shutdown.

Do you need this just in X or with your full system.
It really depends on what you're using.

The actual command is /sbin/halt (with many links).
I guess you could do something like "chmod +s /sbin/halt".

EDIT: Don't do the above on a productive server though, allowing everyone to shut it down is really a bad (and insecure) habit

being the total linux virgin that I am, I have been logging out of X, logging out of my user in CLI, logging in as root, and then issuing:

"shutdown -h now"

to poweroff the system.

To be totally honest, I didn't know you could power off the system from X using "/sbin/halt" in terminal. BUT, seems I can do that :-) Thanks.

I'm used to DOS, having to log out of windows first before the system is safe to power off.

Check out the commands 'sudo' and 'visudo' and instead of using shutdown, try /sbin/powerdown (no switches to power off) and 'halt -p'

I have to second the sudo approach. It is much safer than having to login as root.

Security is not really an issue for this particular machine (however I do understand the need for it in a corporate / business environment). It is my personal box, and my roommates have no clue what a CLI is, much less how to use one.

I was under the impression that halting a machine simply shut down all of the processes, and essentially 'locked' the box, but didnt actually kill the power (which is what I was trying to accomplish with "shutdown -h now")

I tried halt several times, and when it said the machine was down (I have forgotten the actual terms CLI used) and I then manually killed the power, upon the next reboot I had to run fsck because "the power had been interrupted" and it thought that the disks were not cleanly unmounted.

Thank you everyone for your input. I'm learning. Slowly, and painfully, but still learning :-)

I think using sudo would be a good option. You can run visudo and then add a line similar to
Change "users" to the group which you want to be able to shut down the computer.

alias halt='sudo /sbin/halt'?

Also with sudo you can set users up to be able to use command without having to enter a password, which is very inconvenient when shutting down the machine. For example:I set myself as OWNER, the commands shutdown, reboot, and xfsm-shutdown-helper (which is for XFCE) as SHUTDOWNALLOWED, then tell sudo I can shutdown the computer without a password, while all other commands require one. It is very handy.

This is often desirable for me too. You might want to look at the page http://www.linuxquestions.org or check out the book "Linux Quick Fix Notebook" from your local library. This tells what sudoers commands mean. It also tells some other useful stuff about Linux for someone trying to use it securely for the first time.

on my slack ware i can do a logout and the kdm asks if I want to shut down or reboot from user. if I do not use kdm then xdm gives me the same options. or you can as a user push the control alt back buttons that turns off the xserver then tell them to push control alt delete.
there is a place in the kde control center to configure so you can boot striate to the the strait to the kdm login then the user login then he can logout and turn the computer of from the kdm option.

If you are running Slackware I suggest that you edit the runlevel in /etc/inittab.

Slackware defaults to multiuser non graphical mode which means you log on to X with startx If you change to the multiuser graphical mode (Ithink this means going from 3 to 4 or vice versa) you will boot into X and be able to close down from X.

so by editing the /etc/inittab, i can have the computer boot into X instead of CLI? Interesting. When I get home from work I'll have to check that out.

And I'll be able to shut down from X as well? (a 'shutdown' button as well as the normal 'log off' button)

Indeed you will.