9.10. Adjust behaviour of Ctrl-Alt-Delete
The IBM PC used Ctrl-Alt-Delete to launch a reboot of the computer. Linux traps this
key chord and makes it available to the
init system. This is done by sending
the init process a
SIGINT signal (although ctrlaltdel
hard can undo this trap and make the key chord reboot the
comptuer immediately). The init system
uses /etc/inittab to determine how to handle
the signal generated by the Ctrl-Alt-Delete key
chord.
Most distributions cleanly reboot the system, mimicing the
behaviour that most users expect. Figure 9-14 shows how this is
done.
Depending upon each individual site you may wish to disable
Ctrl-Alt-Delete. This is shown in Figure 9-15.
Alternatively, you may wish to cleanly shut down the
computer. This is very easy to explain to operators and
instructions can be displayed on the monitor using
/etc/issue or a Post-it
Note. If the computer uses Advanced
Power Management (or APM) then
shutting down the computer will also remove the power.