Red Hat® Linux® 7 Unleashed

Shutting Down the Linux System

By now you've learned not only how Linux starts, but also a little bit about how it shuts down. If you look at the scripts in runlevel 0, you'll find a number of services being shut down, followed by the killing of all active processes, and finally, the halt script in /etc/rc.d/init.d directory executing the shutdown.

The halt script is used to either halt or reboot your system, depending on how it is called. What happens during a shutdown? If you're familiar with other operating systems (such as DOS), you remember that all you had to do was close any active application and then turn off the computer. Although Linux is easy to use, shutting down your computer is not as simple as turning it off. (You can try this, ...