shutdown -a missing - can not use /etc/shutdown.allow - ACL

[Matthias Mailänder]

from http://www.netadmintools.com/html/8shutdown.man.html

"If shutdown is called with the -a argument (add this to the invocation of shutdown in /etc/inittab), it checks to see if the file /etc/shutdown.allow is present. It then compares the login names in that file with the list of people that are logged in on a virtual console (from /var/run/utmp). Only if one of those authorized users or root is logged in, it will proceed. Otherwise it will write the message - shutdown: no authorized users logged in - to the (physical) system console. The format of /etc/shutdown.allow is one user name per line. Empty lines and comment lines (prefixed by a #) are allowed. Currently there is a limit of 32 users in this file."

This seems to be missing in Feisty.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Confirmed, another missing feature of the compat/sysv/shutdown utility

[drink (martin-espinoza)]

Is this really a bug? If you want the -a flag, then the sysvinit package is available to you. Also upstart has other flaws, like it's not compatible with selinux (or, presumably, other RBAC schemes?)

On the other hand, I should go make a feature request for the shutdown.allow file to a) support more users and b) support groups, perhaps prefixed with '%'. Now, who is maintaining sysvinit upstream? :)

I think the right way to handle this is actually through RBAC, e.g. selinux. GDM supports RBAC if it's built with the proper option, so if a user doesn't have permission to shut down etc it can be configured not to show it to them. Feisty's GDM at least is new enough, although I don't yet know if it has the option. I'm working on installing selinux for just this purpose.

It is rather curious that gnome doesn't have an option to prevent a user from shutting down through the gnome system. You can disable logout, or the panel item entirely, but not shutdown!?

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

For various reasons, the compat branch of shutdown and reboot are being dropped -- these will now be considered Upstart Native tools and may not behave 100% like their sysvinit equivalents