Ubuntu Manpage: telinit - change system runlevel

Provided by: upstart_1.12.1-0ubuntu4_amd64

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, 0 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 necessary when
upgrading the Upstart init(8) daemon itself or any of its dependent system
libraries to ensure disks can be unmounted cleanly on shutdown.

Note that if the init daemon is not Upstart, this option will have no effect on the
running init(8) daemon.

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 <scott@netsplit.com>

REPORTING BUGS

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

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright © 2009 Canonical Ltd.
       This  is  free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO warranty; not
       even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.