i want to restart my puter off without f***in it up ok. in the console as root i type in "shutdown -r now" and it says unknown command 'shutdown'
ok no problems then, i check my Linux book to see what the REAL command it and it says "# shutdown -r now" so i typed that in and there is absolutely no response, i take out the space between the # and shutdown, still no response.

what am i doing wrong???

well first off, usually by default only root has permissions to that command. are you doing this as root ?
also, are you trying to shutdown the machine, cause a shutdown -r now is actually a reboot.

also you can use:

shutdown -h now
halt
init 0

all of these will shutdown your machine.

shutdown -r now
reboot
init 6
ctrl-alt-delete

all of these will reboot your machine.

if your just a regular user and want them to have permission to shutdown, you can edit those accordingly and add them to the users PATH, or just make an alias to it even...

when a book shows commands and it starts with # or $ it is referring to the # or $ that comes immediately after your prompt
for example
[user@host /home]$ or [root@host /root]#
in otherwords it can pretty much be disregarded.
although i'm not 100% sure, my guess is that root is the only user that can issue the shutdown command on your machine.
try becoming root using the su command
if you don't have root access to your machine, try using halt -n (although slackware kept me from using this unless i was root)
if that doesn't work try issuing the reboot command, then just shut the computer off before your os starts loading
if you can't issue the reboot command, try ctrl-alt-del.

there's something else you can do too, but i forget and don't feel like looking it up, and at least one of the above solutions should work



edit:
damn tricky, you beat me

I tend to do that at times, I'm sorry, I can't help it, I am addicted. Anyways, just realized that he said he typed after the #. That means he is doing this as root, if he's using bash I presume. Hmmmm...

no he said his book shows the # , so he though it was part of the command

alt-ctr-del is for shutdown for some distributions(deb).
the poweroff command will shut down ur system .
i thing init command needs roots previlage.

however u can configure you alt-ctr-del key in /etc/inittab

Usually redhat doesn't include /sbin into root $PATH variable, so try typing the obsolute path to the command
/sbin/shutdown -r now
must work.

You are absolutely correct, but not necessarily right. The shutdown command, with parameters, will properly shutdown/reboot your Linux -- safely. "Halt" or "init 0" will shutdown your machine, but not with reasonable assurance of safety of your data. The same with "reboot" and "init 6". Those shorcuts should only be used if nothing else will work -- and not just for convenience. As for "ctrl/alt/delete", the actual actions performed are controllable by an entry in your /etc/inittab file and can either halt or reboot your Linux installation.

some of those don't work on my machine, i haven't been on that machine since last night because it takes like 15 minutes to boot (i can't set mandrake to boot in console and it's on a celeron 500 omg)

i actually remember the sequence of commands i did

shutdown -r now
unknown command 'shutdown'
#shutdown -r now
(no error message, just doesn't do anything)
shutdown -h now
uknown command 'shutdown'
#shutdown -h now
(no message, does nothing)


ok so now i know the # should not be included....... i'm having a bitch of a time with Mandrake here. Mandrake is actually refusing to connect to the internet. instead of reposting, i will just give ya the link to the anandtech thread
http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...hreadid=797574

well obivously you need to specify the path of /sbin/shutdown, doesn't matter what parameters you bother giving to the program, it's quite obivous from the errors you get that it just plain can't find it... (and you know that # comments it out, so is utterly wrong here). I assume you are greatly exagerating the 15 minute boot up. if you're not then somethign is blatantly very wrong.

btw sakeeb
ctrl+alt+del will restart computer not shutdown
and yes
/sbin/shutdown -r now
or
/sbin/halt

it's really funny that #, but I remember used to have similar dilemas.

15 minutes to boot is right. If he can't shutdown, he probably has to run a full fsck every book (ouch).

surprisingly, no. it really does take that long to boot.
yeah, i just just said it was a celeron, you gotta start listenin lol. well it's bit more than just a celeron problem, it has a VERY slow motherboard and it's PC100 RAM. there's no surprise why it's so friggin slow.

with the boot up, it stays on the emachines logo for about 3 minutes. then it starts to load KDE, it gets stuck on network io or something like that for about 10 minutes then continues to load for about 2 minutes.

no, even my p120 boots in 2 minutes. i guess it's that fsck...

yeah right, there is no way a P1 can load that 350mb program KDE in 2 minutes. my buddy's Athlon 1200 takes about 1 and a half minutes.