[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#586709: closed by Thomas Goirand

[Jesse Smith]

>    > The user is basically reporting, in the above situation, that they
>    > change the default behaviour, but then want to change it back using
>    > another method and I don't think Debian's approach supports that.
>
>    Where is this limitation documented in the halt(8) or halt(5) man
>    pages, or the /etc/default/halt config file itself?

It's not documented in the halt manual page because it's not a
limitation of the halt command. It's a problem with the /etc/init.d/halt
script. The halt command is working as expected, it's the script that is
overriding the command line behaviour.

>
>    > Basically, everything is working "as expected",
>
>    What I expect is that the system works as documented.

Agreed. I'm just saying this isn't a coding problem with halt, or a
problem with its documentation. I'm saying that my opinion is that this
is a problem with the way /etc/default/halt and its corresponding script
change behaviour vs what the user expects from running halt from the
command line. Those scripts are doing what they're told to do (override
halt's command line behaviour).

It's basically a case of one person telling halt to always stop the
system (in /etc/default/halt) and another person telling halt to
poweroff (via the command line). Debian currently is set up so the first
user "wins". Both settings can't be right, so the implementation (as it
is now) follows the first user's instruction.

It might be possible to change this using various tricks so the second
user "wins", but that means overriding /etc/default/init