Re: Let init know user wants to shutdown

[Kurt Roeckx <Q@ping.be>]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2001 at 11:20:24PM +0000, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
> 
> the shutdown scripts
> include "kill -15 -1; sleep 2; kill -9 -1". The "-1" means
> "all processes except me". That means init will get hit with
> SIGTERM occasionally during shutdown, and that might cause
> weird things to happen.

-1 mean everything but init.

>From the manpage:

       If pid equals -1, then sig is sent to every process except
       for the first one, from  higher  numbers  in  the  process
       table to lower.

And later:

BUGS
       It  is impossible to send a signal to task number one, the
       init process, for which it has not installed a signal han-
       dler.   This  is  done to assure the system is not brought
       down accidentally.


Kurt