Hands-on Lab·Red Hat Certified System Administrator
Boot, Reboot and Shutdown
The shortest objective in the blueprint, with one genuine trap: `shutdown -k` is described as sending warnings without shutting down, and it also creates `/run/nologin`, which stops every unprivileged user logging in until it is removed. That is captured, along with scheduling and cancelling.
Operating Running Systems Guide 22 of 67 Beginner
- OSRHEL 10.0 (Coughlan)
- Kernel6.12.0-55.9.1.el10_0
- dnf4.20.0
- Flatpak1.16.0
- TimeAbout 12 min
- Reviewed23 August 2026
Written against the versions above. `systemctl reboot`, `systemctl poweroff` and `systemctl halt` are the systemd forms; `shutdown -r now` and `shutdown -h now` still work and are wrappers around the same calls. Only `shutdown` can schedule, and only `shutdown` creates `/run/nologin`.
| Server Name | IP Address | OS | Roles | CPU | RAM | HDD |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RHCSA-A01 | 192.168.0.31 | RHEL 10.0 (Coughlan) | Practice node (graded) - spare /dev/sda | 2 Core | 4 GB | 50 GB + 15 GB |
Before you start
- A sudo-capable account.
- Every scheduling command below cancels itself in the same command. Do not run them separately on a machine you reach only over the network.
-
Where the machine is now
-
The commands
-
`-k` is not harmless
-
Scheduling and cancelling
-
What the last boot looked like