Home / ubuntu / Questions / 168879
In Process
Santosh Kumar
Asked: 2012-07-28 07:14:59 +0800 CST

Shutdown from terminal without entering password?

  • 772

I have desktop edition of Ubuntu.

I like the Terminal so that that I prefer to shutdown my computer with the shutdown command.

However when I type shutdown now it prompts me to enter my password.Is there any way I can shutdown my computer using this command without entering my password?

command-line

6 Answers

  1. Open up a terminal (CTRL + T) and type the following sudo visudo

    Add the following line:

    %group_name ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/poweroff, /sbin/reboot, /sbin/shutdown

    or

    user_name ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/poweroff, /sbin/reboot, /sbin/shutdown

    This allows the user/group to run the above three commands, using sudo, however with no password.

    So, sudo poweroff will now result in a passwordless shutdown.

    However, to make this even cleaner, we'll add an alias, so that running shutdown calls sudo shutdown now.

    Open ~/.bash_aliases for editing.

    nano ~/.bash_aliases

    Insert the following line at the end of the file: 

    alias shutdown='sudo shutdown now'

    Finally, load the changes to the .bash_aliases file...

    source ~/.bash_aliases

    Try it out!

    shutdown

    Thanks, Eric.

    • 70

  2. A safe way to do this without using sudo and without tinkering with the system, is by executing these one-liner commands:

    For Ubuntu 15.04 and later:

    (This is due to Ubuntu's shift in using systemd instead of Upstart)

    systemctl poweroff

systemctl reboot

systemctl suspend

systemctl hibernate

systemctl hybrid-sleep

    Since hibernate is normally disabled by default in Ubuntu systems, you can enable this by checking this answer. Original source here.


    For Ubuntu 14.10 or earlier:

    Shutdown:

    /usr/bin/dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit" /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Manager org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Stop

    Restart:

    /usr/bin/dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit" /org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Manager org.freedesktop.ConsoleKit.Manager.Restart

    consolekit Install consolekit should of course be installed your system.

    Other commands you may like:

    Suspend:

    /usr/bin/dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.UPower" /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend

    Hibernate: (if enabled on your system)

    /usr/bin/dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest="org.freedesktop.UPower" /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Hibernate
    • 38

  3. unity uses many gnome services, and in that case too - you can shutdown gnome way.

    gnome-session-quit --power-off --force --no-prompt

    will do the job.

    • 3

  4. While you can use the method of allowing NOPASSWD on /usr/sbin/shutdown, although another, DE-independent solution is to just use init 0.

    • 1

  5. On Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, I created a polkit file with

    echo "[Shutdown or suspend without a password]
Identity=unix-user:$USER
Action=org.freedesktop.login1.set-wall-message;org.freedesktop.login1.halt;org.freedesktop.login1.suspend
ResultAny=yes
" | sudo tee /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/allow_shutdown_suspend.pkla

    With this, systemctl halt and systemctl suspend work without a password. This also work remotely with e.g. ssh 192.168.0.55 -t 'systemctl suspend'.

    • 1

  6. that is easy. using -S option like this:

    echo <your-password> | sudo -S poweroff
    • 0