How to turn off, restart, and shutdown in Linux

[Xan Mathew]

Hello friends,

I had recently install Ubuntu as my operating system and i am not much familiar about how to turn off, restart, and shutdown in Linux, when i asked my friend about it he told me that you have to do it through Linux shell and i don't have any idea about it, can anyone direct me , i think i had made a very big mistake by installing Linux as my operating system.

[Ramchandra]

My friend there is no need to change your operating system from Linux to Microsoft, i know in starting you will face some difficult because is somewhat different from Microsoft Operating system, but some you get user friendly you will be happy to know that your system is much secure from Windows XP because in Linux your system will not be infected with virus and there is no need to format your system at periodic time.

[JamesB]

If want to shut down or reboot your system then you can easily do it by using GUI interface, mostly this option is located at the the main menu or you can find it out the one of the bar located on one side of the window. Over there you will find it out the option for shut down and reboot your system with out any issue.

[Ethan123]

Can anyone one help tell me which commands are needed to be used for turn off, restart in Linux when i ask my friends about it they also don't know the exact command, thanks JamesB for providing GUI interface , it would be great if you can provide me commands which are used if a user want to shut down his system through command line.

[JamesB]

Following is the list of command which is being used in Linux for turn off, restart and shutdown in Linux, but before that you need to login as root. If you want to Shutdown and power off the computer then you need to use /sbin/poweroff. To restart the computer you need to use /sbin/reboot and if you are planning to shutdown and restart your computer immediately then you need to use Shutdown the /sbin/shutdown -r now and /sbin/shutdown now respectively.

[Ektaa]

There are many other options too which are being used with shut down option which is as follows:-

-a Use /etc/shutdown.allow.
-t sec Tell init(8) to wait sec seconds between sending processes the warning and the kill signal, before changing to another runlevel.
-k Don't really shutdown; only send the warning messages to everybody.
-r Reboot after shutdown.
-h Halt after shutdown.
-n [DEPRECATED] Don't call init(8) to do the shutdown but do it ourself. The use of this option is discouraged, and its results are not always what you'd expect.
-f Skip fsck on reboot.
-F Force fsck on reboot