On Wed, May 16, 2001 at 05:03:08PM -0400, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> [ On Wednesday, May 16, 2001 at 17:37:15 (+0100), Tim Preston wrote: ]
> > Subject: Re: CVS commit: basesrc
> >
> > Luke Mewburn wibbled one day
> > > If you actually tried this, you'll note that shutdown(8) runs
> > > /etc/rc.shutdown on the terminal you've connected from (not
> > > /dev/console), and has done since /etc/rc.shutdown was implemented
> > > (even before rc.d was incorporated).
> > 
> > How does this help if you don't use the 'now' flag and log off?
> 
> Why would you log off?  That's shooting yourself in the foot!  You
> should always just let the system (i.e. init) kill your shell -- that
> way you know the shutdown actually completed!

Yeah, unless, let's say, the shutdown script for sshd kills your login
session before the shutdown script for oracle fails to stop the database
and hangs your system forever.

Great.  Just great.

At the very least, shutdown scripts should have to supply a bounded time
within which they will complete, and after which they may be killed;
shutdown scripts that don't supply such a time limit should not be run.

Thor