"halt" does not power off on Ubuntu Server 12.04

**CharlesA** · May 3rd, 2012

Originally Posted by caraboy

I have the same problem, "halt -p" seems to work though.

I don`t mind using this command, as long as the machine stops, but this should be written somewhere, as I lost all night trying to find an answer to why the system was not shutting down.

Glad you were able to find a solution.

I just wish they had documented thing change somewhere, but I have a feeling it is a bug. Have you added that the bug affects you to the report in post #9?

**deribo** · September 14th, 2012

hello,

try to edit /etc/init.d/halt and remove this lines:

Code:

if [ "$INIT_HALT" = "HALT" ]
then
  poweroff=""
fi

below

Code:

poweroff="-p"

this fixes the problem for me.

Dennis

**angry_johnnie** · September 14th, 2012

I'm pretty sure that's no bug, but rather standard, expected, behaviour.

Shutdown invokes several scripts to properly stop all running processes and, finally, invokes halt.

It seems that, in many cases, halt has been symlinked to shutdown, so that running sudo halt will have the same effect as sudo shutdown -h now, but it's really not the same.

halt -p would be correct.

man halt would give you some more info.

**CharlesA** · September 14th, 2012

Glad you were able to figure out how to work around the issue.

I have just learned to use poweroff if I want to power the box down.

Thanks.

**furynick** · February 22nd, 2013

Had the same issue and learnt that halt command should not be used to shut down a Linux OS as other Unixes, shutdown must be use instead to properly shut down a Linux box.

I guess halt, poweroff and reboot commands (at least) should not be in PATH but in /usr/lib/upstart to avoid confusion.

**ulabunt** · May 17th, 2013

It's clear that "halt" command now by default does not power off unless you use -p option.
But why does it not respect the setting from /etc/default/halt?
etc/init.d/halt sources the default file but its used only if $INIT_HALT is empty.
It seems though that when I call halt, $INIT_HALT has allready value HALT.
So I forced it to act on information from /etc/default/halt, by commenting out the if statement.
/etc/init.d/halt:

Code:

do_stop () {    
     #if [ "$INIT_HALT" = "" ]
    #then
        case "$HALT" in
          [Pp]*)
            INIT_HALT=POWEROFF
            ;;
          [Hh]*)
            INIT_HALT=HALT
            ;;
          *)
            INIT_HALT=POWEROFF
            ;;
        esac
    #fi

**johnycage** · June 18th, 2013

Originally Posted by CharlesA

It just says "system halted" like it did on Lucid except it doesn't power the box off. "halt -p", "poweroff", "shutdown -h now" all power the box off fine.

I updated the launchpad bug asking if this is intended or what, but no response as of yet.

Guess I'll just have to learn a new command as I've always use halt to power off an *nix machine. *shrugs*

EDIT: Filed a new bug report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...rt/+bug/991997

Thank you for clarification. I've been using halt for long but it doesnt work on 12.04LTS. Should use 'halt -p' now on.

**CharlesA** · June 18th, 2013

Originally Posted by johnycage

Thank you for clarification. I've been using halt for long but it doesnt work on 12.04LTS. Should use 'halt -p' now on.

Welcome.

Getting in the habit of using poweroff hasn't been that big of a deal, and now I don't have to worry about the machine being running but not powered off.