Bug#810608: systemd-sysv: on shutdown, fails to inform users that the system is going down

[Francesco Poli]

Control: reopen -1


On Wed, 18 Jul 2018 16:38:21 +0200 Michael Biebl wrote:

> > Yes, I confirm that issuing
[...]
> >   # shutdown 5
[...]
> > or
[...]
> >   # shutdown
[...]
> > failed to show the broadcast message to the users.
> 
> I tested this on a stable system, for a locally logged in user and one
> logged in via SSH.
> Both got the wall message
> 
> Broadcast message from root at debian on tty1 (Wed 2018-07-18 16:37:14 CEST):
> 
> The system is going down for poweroff at Wed 2018-07-18 16:38:14 CEST!
> 
> 
> I thus conclude that this issue has been fixed in the mean time and will
> close the bug accordingly.

This issue has only partially been fixed.

I can confirm that the wall message is now sent, when using
"shutdown -r" (which has the implicit delay of 1 min).

However, when using "reboot", "poweroff" (and "halt", I
suppose), no wall message is sent.

As I have already said in message [#17], when the "reboot", "halt", and
"poweroff" commands are provided by package sysvinit-core, they do not
take a delay time argument either, but they send a broadcast message to
all logged users to inform them that the system is going down.
I have always seen such message and I think it's really useful to
understand why your SSH connection was closed.

On the other hand, when the "reboot", "halt", and "poweroff" commands
are provided by package systemd-sysv, they fail to send such broadcast
message.
Please note that the halt(8) man page shipped by package systemd-sysv
even mentions a --no-wall option to suppress the broadcast message!
Hence, I am under the impression that this broadcast message is
supposed to be sent, but fails to be actually sent due to a bug.

Although I agree with Martin Pitt that, on multi-user systems, it's
polite to do something like "shutdown -r 5", I believe that the
immediate commands ("reboot", "halt", and "poweroff") exist for all the
situations where it's reasonable or needed to shut the system down as
soon as possible. I think that informing users of what's happening
should be done in any case.

[#17]: <https://bugs.debian.org/810608#17>


I am therefore reopening the bug report.

-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
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