Shut Down or Reboot a Solaris System
Solaris is usually used as a server operating system. Because of this, you want to make sure that you shut the system down as gracefully as possible to ensure there isn’t any data loss.
For every application that is installed on your server, you should make sure that you have the correct scripts in /etc/rc(x).d to gracefully shut down the service.
Shutdown
You have more than one command option that you can use. The best command is this, executed as root:
shutdown -y -i5 -g0
This will immediately shut the system down. You can also use the older command that still works:
sync;sync;init 5
You can even use:
poweroff
Reboot
If you are trying to reboot the system as opposed to turning it off, you could use:
shutdown -y -i6 -g0
Or:
sync;sync;init 6
Or even:
reboot
So many commands to do the same thing… almost seems silly.

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There are differences between shutdown, reboot, init 6.
Shutdown will issue a warning, and can be deferred.
init 6 calls application shutdown scripts. reboot does not.
Thanks for the tip… I had read somewhere that reboot calls the shutdown scripts, but I guess that was incorrect.
Does any one know how to get the shutdown/hibernate options to appear on the logoff screen for my version: developers solaris 10?
I just want to use it on my home PC as a desktop OS.
The sync’s you’ve added before init are totally superflous.
“poweroff” only exists on the big SunFire systems.
avoir poweroff and reboot : as they don’t call the /etc/…. scripts they should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.
prefer “init _number_” (works on old and new versions) for solaris.
(note: on linux, prefer “telinit _number_” to go in that mode (ex: telinit 1 to go into single user mode)
Solaris 10 Developers edition – the CME desktop (the old one that looks a bit like an Amstrad 286 GUI, lol) doesn’t seem to have a button to shutdown.
The KDE desktop – I think I used the command line (terminal, konsole) and just typed in ’shutdown’ – it’s a bit temperamental cause the default install configures things like DHCP and expects the machine to be online all the time; mine isn’t, so sometimes it refuses to entirely close. Sometimes it doesn’t want to start either but it’s usually ok and hasn’t ever crashed. I haven’t looked at what I should disable / enable yet on the running services…
nb – Sun’s manual and help pages for commands for mounting USB harddrives are wrong for Developer 10!
How do you create a shutdown script that would reboot the computer for every 30 minutes with the warning script?
#!/bin/ksh
echo “please reboot this computer NOW”
#END SCRIPT
put that script in crontab and configure so it runs every 30 minutes
i have a question ..
#shutdown -y -i5 -g0
here g means gracefully and i means init 5 to shutdown
what is -y ? what it indicates?
the ‘-y’ means ‘yes, i really mean to do this’