<div dir="ltr">The shutdown group with the sudoers file is the correct way to do it. </div><div class="gmail_extra"> <div class="gmail_quote">2015-03-26 17:19 GMT-04:00 Karl Auer <<a href="mailto:kauer@biplane.com.au" target="_blank">kauer@biplane.com.au</a>>: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">On Thu, 2015-03-26 at 07:03 -0400, william drescher wrote: > How can a non-privileged user initiate a shutdown. Only do this if you trust your users to shutdown only when necessary. There are lots of ways! - have a cronjob that checks every minute for a specific file in /tmp and shuts down if the file exists - have a setuid script that shuts the system down - have a "shutdown" group, put your users into it, add a sudoers rule to let that group shut the system down - put the system on a UPS, run a UPS client that will shut the system down if the power fails, and tell your users to turn off the power to the UPS in an emergency. - and probably a few other ways as well. Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (<a href="mailto:kauer@biplane.com.au">kauer@biplane.com.au</a>) <a href="http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer" target="_blank">http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer</a> <a href="http://twitter.com/kauer389" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/kauer389</a> GPG fingerprint: 3C41 82BE A9E7 99A1 B931 5AE7 7638 0147 2C3C 2AC4 Old fingerprint: EC67 61E2 C2F6 EB55 884B E129 072B 0AF0 72AA 9882 -- ubuntu-users mailing list <a href="mailto:ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com">ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com</a> Modify settings or unsubscribe at: <a href="https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users" target="_blank">https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users</a> </blockquote></div> </div>