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telinit

Section: Maintenance Commands (8)
Updated: 2009-07-09
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NAME

telinit – change system runlevel

SYNOPSIS

telinit

[OPTION]…

RUNLEVEL

DESCRIPTION

telinit

may be used to change the system runlevel.

The
RUNLEVEL

argument should be one of the multi-user runlevels
2-5,

to halt the system,
6

to reboot the system or
1

to bring the system down into single-user mode.

Normally you would use the
shutdown(8)

tool to halt or reboot the system, or to bring it down to single-user mode.

RUNLEVEL

may also be
S or s

which will place the system directly into single-user mode without actually
stopping processes first, you probably won’t want that.

The runlevel is changed by emitting the
runlevel(7)

event, which includes the new runlevel in the
RUNLEVEL

environment variable as well as the previous runlevel (obtained from the
environment or from
/var/run/utmp)

in the
PREVLEVEL variable.

telinit

will write the new runlevel to
/var/run/utmp

and append a new entry to
/var/log/wtmp.

Other commands

telinit

may be also used to send basic commands to the
init(8)

daemon for compatibility with System V. These are:

Q or q

to request that
init(8)

reload its configuration. This is rarely necessary since Upstart watches
its configuration with
inotify(7)

and is deprecated by the
initctl(8)

reload-configuration

command.

U or u

to request that the
init(8)

daemon re-execute itself. This is not recommended since Upstart is currently
unable to preserve its state, but is necessary when upgrading system
libraries.

OPTIONS

-e KEY=VALUE

This specifies an additional environment variable to be included in the event
along with
RUNLEVEL

and
PREVLEVEL.

ENVIRONMENT

RUNLEVEL

telinit

will read the current runlevel from this environment variable if set in
preference to reading from
/var/run/utmp

FILES

/var/run/utmp

Where the current runlevel will be read from; this file will also be updated
with the new runlevel.

/var/log/wtmp

A new runlevel record will be appended to this file for the new runlevel.

NOTES

The Upstart
init(8)

daemon does not keep track of runlevels itself, instead they are implemented
entirely by its userspace tools.

See
runlevel(7)

for more details.

AUTHOR

Written by Scott James Remnant
<[email protected]>

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs at
<https://launchpad.net/upstart/+bugs>

COPYRIGHT

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

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NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

Other commands