halt(5)

📦
version 3.14 · 2 versions
, in debian trixie

💅 halt(5) — like, the File Formats manual, bestie

okay so real talk, this is halt(5) from the File Formats section of the manual. It's short. It's sweet. It's literally just a little config file that decides how your machine goes night-night. Let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

halt — the variables that affect the behavior of the shutdown scripts. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 💤

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So there's this file, /etc/default/halt, and it holds variable settings written in POSIX format, like this:

VAR=VAL

Rules of the game, no cap:

  • Only one assignment per line. One. Per. Line. Don't be greedy.
  • Comments are allowed too — anything starting with # gets ignored, so go ahead and annotate your life. ✍️

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

Here are the variables you can set. There's two. They're both kinda iconic in their own way.

  • HALT — this one's the main character of the file.
    • If you set it to poweroff, the system gets powered down after it's been brought down. This is the default, so if you do nothing, this is what happens. ✨
    • If you set it to halt, the system is only halted after it's been brought down. And what "halted" actually means? Bestie, that depends on your hardware. It's giving "it depends". 🙈
  • NETDOWN — the network-interface gatekeeper.
    • Set it to no and that prevents shutdown from shutting down the network interfaces. This is necessary to use Wake-On-Lan, so if you wanna wake your baby up remotely, this is the one. 🔥
    • Set it to yes and shutdown will also bring down the network interfaces — which means it prevents the machine from being woken up remotely. So pick your fighter, you literally cannot have both. 💀
ngl, NETDOWN is the whole reason this file exists for a lot of people. Wake-On-Lan girlies, this is your moment. 🦋

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

go read those too, they're the sequel. 📚

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Casper Gielen <casper@gielen.name> — thank you for your service, king. 🫡

This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. Slay, and also, legally, slay. 💜

This manual page is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. (Translation: it's free, it's not our fault if something breaks, read the license fr fr.) 😭

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this manual page; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA. 💌

⭐ and that's the whole page, bestie. this one was dated 16 Jan 2007, and it's the halt(5) page — File Formats section, in case you were wondering where to find it in the manual. periodt. 💅🎀
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