inittab ignored by reboot / halt

[Rob Landley]

On Tuesday 21 October 2008 07:50:06 Denys Vlasenko wrote:
> It just sends SIGUSR1, SIGUSR2 or SIGTERM to init.
> If nothing happens, it means init did not react correctly
> to these signals.
>
> (To other readers - see why I think "signalling init on reboot"
> is a stupid idea? It makes fixing it so much more complex
> and difficult. Oh well)

Signaling init on reboot allows init to run shutdown scripts before exiting.  
That's why it's done.  (And it's not all signals, some init variants have a 
pipe you open and send the commands through instead.)

The halt and reboot commands have a force option for when you don't want to go 
through init.

> > If I run "halt -f" or "reboot -f" the system reboots fine,
>
> It does the "hard reboot" by asking kernel to do it immediately.

Doesn't quiesce the system.  I believe it doesn't even sync.  But yeah, it 
should shut it down.

Rob