halt – stop the system

halt stops the system. On modern systems, use systemctl poweroff or shutdown instead.

Synopsis

halt [OPTIONS]

Examples

Halt the system

$ sudo halt

Force halt (no sync)

$ sudo halt -f

Modern Alternatives

systemctl (preferred)

$ sudo systemctl poweroff    # Shutdown and power off
$ sudo systemctl halt        # Halt only (no power off)
$ sudo systemctl reboot      # Reboot

shutdown command

$ sudo shutdown -h now       # Halt now
$ sudo shutdown -h +5        # Halt in 5 minutes
$ sudo shutdown -r now       # Reboot now
$ sudo shutdown -c           # Cancel scheduled shutdown

poweroff

$ sudo poweroff

halt vs poweroff

Tips

• Use shutdown: More graceful, warns users
• Use systemctl: Modern systemd way
• Virtual machines: halt often enough
• Physical servers: poweroff or shutdown to power off

See Also

Related Commands

• shutdown — Scheduled shutdown
• reboot — Restart system
• systemctl — systemd control

Tutorials

• Basic Unix Commands