Re: sound, automatic power management

[David Ellement <david ellement home com>]

On 010305, at 23:52:12, Elton Woo wrote:
> David Ellement wrote:
> > At the X login screen, I can select shutdown, and the system does
> > halt.  However, it leave monitor displaying "System is halted", and
> > the power is on.  My hardware is capable of powering down; if I run
> > poweroff (as root) the system halts *AND* turns off the power.
> 
>         I don't know about RH 6.2, since I've only started using
> RH from version 7.0. What I *do* know, was that when I booted with
> the secure kernel in RH 7.0, I could only shut off power from the
> Xlogin screen, if I had logged in and out, as *root*.
> 
>         Once I booted the "regular" kernel, I could logout from my
> *user account*, to the Xlogin screen_,  from whence I could select
> "shutdown", resulting the entire system shutting *off* power.
> Perhaps I didn't explain properly the first time.

Perhaps I'm a little dense.  Are you making a distinction between
"halt" and "poweroff"?


I don't believe I'm running the secure kernel.  As the system is now
configured anyone, with or without an account, can halt the system
from the Xlogin screen by selecting "shutdown".   After selecting
shutdown, the OS shuts down (no X, no login prompt, no response to
the keyboard except to reboot at Ctrl-Alt-Del), and the monitor
displays several lines of text, the last of which is "The system is
halted" (the very message that appears in /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt).
However, the power remains on.


Looking closer at /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt, I see it tests for the
presence of /poweroff or the absence of /halt to decide whether or
not to add the '-p' option to the halt command line.  In my case,
the shutdown process seems to be creating /halt prior to calling
/etc/rc.d/init.d/halt, so the system only halts, and doesn't
poweroff.  I can modify /etc/rc.d/init.d/halt to always add the '-p'
option, and then it always turns off the power.

What determines whether the shutdown process creates /poweroff or
/halt?

-- 
David Ellement