[systemd-devel] Q: shutdown messages and the lack of such

[Dave Howorth]

On Thu, 08 Oct 2020 14:29:24 +0000
fox <firefox at firemail.cc> wrote:
> > I wonder: Shouldn't here be an infiormational message at least when
> > the shutdown command is entered, and at least a notice message when
> > the actual shutdown time has arrived?
> > If you review syslog laternot at all obvious what had happened.  
> 
> 
>         shutdown [OPTIONS...] [TIME] [WALL...]
> 
> Note that to specify a wall message you must specify a time argument, 
> too.
> --no-wall #  Do not send wall message before halt, power-off, reboot.
> 
> so, "shutdown now" # has an implicit   --no-wall
> 
> seems it acts according to specs.

I think Ulrich's point was that the docs for previous versions of
shutdown were consistent with its behaviour, which was to send a wall
message and you could customise the message by supplying a command line
argument.

It appears that the systemctl implementation has changed the behaviour,
and the documentation. Whether there is a spec anywhere (POSIX or
whatever) I do not know - but certainly a man page is not a spec. Nor
do I know whether this was a deliberate and publically agreed change
in behaviour or something else.