On Mon, 17 Jan 2000, Aaron J. Grier wrote:

> this is kind of a stupid question, but is there any way to invoke
> shutdown via a keypress (like control-alt-delete) from a login screen on
> an i386 running 1.4 and wscons?  running "reboot" from ddb doesn't
> unmount filesystems.
> 
> Other than giving my boss the root password or leaving an open root
> login, the only other option seems to be a "shutdown" account...

The last option is probably the best. As long as you add the account
to the operator group, you can make the account's shell a script
(_not_ suid) that calls /sbin/shutdown with the appropriate arguments.
The rest of your shutdown goo belongs in /etc/rc.shutdown.local.

There is a way to shut down cleanly from the debugger, but I don't
know if I'd trust that to a supervisor. ;-)

db> kill 1
db> c

....

# sync
# sync
# sync
# shutdown -r now

This assumes that the console is marked secure in /etc/ttys. In fact,
having the debugger available is practically equivalent to having the
root password, trivially so if the console is marked secure (as you
can see).