Shutting down the system

The shutdown command is the safest and most thorough way to halt the operating system.

You might want to shut down your system:

• After installing new software or changing the configuration for existing software
• When a hardware problem exists
• When the system is irrevocably hung
• When system performance is degraded
• When the file system is possibly corrupt.

When you designate the appropriate flags, this command notifies users that the system is about to go down, kills all existing processes, unmounts file systems, and halts the system. See shutdown for more information.

Review the following information for details on specific shutdown situations: