Shutting Down the FreeBSD System

As mentioned in Chapter 2, it is very important that you always shut down a FreeBSD (or any other UNIX) system properly before turning off the power. Failure to do so can result in serious damage to the filesystem.

Using the shutdown Command

The normal way to shut down the system is with the shutdown command. You saw one way to do it in Chapter 2. Before we actually shut down the system now, however, I am going to show you several other options for this command.

The basic syntax of the shutdown command is as follows:

shutdown [action] [when] [broadcast message]

In other words, the first option tells shutdown what to do, the second option tells shutdown when to do it, and the third option tells shutdown the message ...

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