On 01/02/2013 10:59 PM, Tom Gundersen wrote:
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 12:28 AM, Fons Adriaensen <fons@linuxaudio.org> wrote:
* What is the purpose of halt.target ? It stops the system but leaves power on. AFAICS, it's not possible to restart without a power cycle... Under sysvinit halt and poweroff were the same. Under systemd 'halt' halts the machine, whereas 'poweroff' first halts the machine and then switches off the power.
I use 'halt' a lot to debug shutdown bugs, don't know if it has other uses.
Manually power cycling a halted machine is safe.
-t I can confirm what Tom is saying is correct, on my old slackware install halt was the same as shutting down. On my arch install that uses systemd halt is like giving your computer a lobotomy. Its still on but nothing going on.
Personally I suspend my computer all the time unless I need to reboot it for an update or need to shut it down because of a thunderstorm. Good question though. -Matt