poweroff - Man Page

• Power off the system: poweroff
• Halt the system (same as halt): poweroff --halt
• Reboot the system (same as reboot): poweroff --reboot
• Shut down immediately without contacting the system manager: poweroff [-f|--force]
• Write the wtmp shutdown entry without shutting down the system: poweroff [-w|--wtmp-only]

tldr.sh

poweroff [Options...]

reboot [Options...]

halt [Options...]

poweroff, reboot, and halt may be used to power off, reboot, or halt the machine​. All three commands take the same options​.

The following options are understood:

--help

Print a short help text and exit​.

Added in version 253​.

--halt

Halt the machine, regardless of which one of the three commands is invoked​.

Added in version 253​.

-p,  --poweroff

Power off the machine, when either halt or poweroff is invoked​. This option is ignored when reboot is invoked​.

Added in version 253​.

--reboot

Reboot the machine, regardless of which one of the three commands is invoked​.

Added in version 253​.

-f,  --force

Force immediate power-off, halt, or reboot​. If specified, the command does not contact the init system​. In most cases, filesystems are not properly unmounted before shutdown​. For example, the command reboot -f is mostly equivalent to systemctl reboot -ff, instead of systemctl reboot -f​.

Added in version 253​.

-w,  --wtmp-only

Only write wtmp shutdown entry, do not actually power off, reboot, or halt​.

Added in version 253​.

-d,  --no-wtmp

Do not write wtmp shutdown entry​.

Added in version 253​.

-n,  --no-sync

Do not sync hard disks/storage media before power-off, reboot, or halt​.

Added in version 253​.

--no-wall

Do not send wall message before power-off, reboot, or halt​.

Added in version 253​.

On success, 0 is returned, a non-zero failure code otherwise​.

These commands are implemented in a way that preserves basic compatibility with the original SysV commands​. systemctl(1) verbs poweroff, reboot, halt provide the same functionality with some additional features​.

Note that on many SysV systems halt used to be synonymous to poweroff, i​.e​. both commands would equally result in powering the machine off​. systemd is more accurate here, and halt results in halting the machine only (leaving power on), and poweroff is required to actually power it off​.

systemd(1), systemctl(1), shutdown(8), wall(1)

fsck.minix(8), mkfs.minix(8), reboot(2), shutdown(8), sudo(8), systemd.directives(7), systemd.index(7), virt-p2v(1).

The man pages halt(8) and reboot(8) are aliases of poweroff(8).