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The Boot Process, Init, and Shutdown

RHC Linux uses SysV style init scripts (scripts which run at boot time), which live in /etc/rc.d. These scripts take care of initializing networking, nfs, cron, syslog, sendmail, lpd, etc. You should not mess around with these files unless you know what you are doing -- you could easily prevent your system from booting.

The following runlevels are used in RHC Linux:

0
Halt.
1
Single user mode.
2
Multiuser mode, without NFS.
3
Full multiuser mode.
6
Reboot.

If your machine gets into a state where it will not boot due to a bad /etc/inittab, or will not let you login because you have screwed up /etc/passwd, or simply forgotten your password, boot into single user mode by typing linux 1 at the LILO boot prompt. The system will come up and you will be given a shell from which you can fix things.

To shutdown RHC Linux, issue the shutdown command. If you want to turn off your computer, you should shutdown and halt:

shutdown -h now

If you want to shutdown and reboot use:

shutdown -r now

Do not run reboot or halt directly!. Those commands will not bring the system down gracefully, and you may cause file system corruption by using them.



Marc Ewing
Mon Jun 19 17:22:10 EDT 1995