Bug 1257243

Summary: RFE: Option for poweroff(1)/reboot(1) to describe why a shutdown/reboot takes place
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Reporter: nyelle <nyelle>
Component: systemdAssignee: Jan Synacek <jsynacek>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: qe-baseos-daemons
Severity: low Docs Contact: Maxim Svistunov <msvistun>
Priority: high    
Version: 7.3CC: bblaskov, bbreard, jhradile, jscotka, jsynacek, lnykryn, nparmar, salmy, systemd-maint-list, systemd-maint
Target Milestone: rcKeywords: FutureFeature, Patch
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: x86_64   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Release Note
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2017-01-24 13:29:54 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 1203710, 1298243, 1313485, 1383699, 1393867    

Description nyelle@redhat.com 2015-08-26 14:54:12 UTC
Description of problem:
Even this might sound very strange, I would like to see an option for 
poweroff(1)/reboot(1) to describe why a shutdown/reboot takes place,
similar like the Microsoft Windows shutdown event tracker. When doing
server maintenance on production systems, I treat it as helpful to know
at a later point when scrolling through the logs why a reboot happened.

Upstream link: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/1029/files

I could imagine something like this:

  reboot -m "Security update of kernel"

Or:

  poweroff -m "Replacement of defunct NIC"

So the goal would be to have this message finally logged in systemd's
journal (or /var/log/messages). I don't know if it makes sense to even
introduce predefined groups (which autofill -m), but my personal needs
would be satisfied with above. I indeed could call logger(1) or so, but
it would be nice to have it along with the command that I run anyway.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
systemd-208-20.el7_1.5.x86_64

Actual results:
No option for poweroff(1)/reboot(1) to describe why a shutdown/reboot
takes place.

Expected results:
Option for poweroff(1)/reboot(1) to describe why a shutdown/reboot takes
place.

Comment 6 Lukáš Nykrýn 2016-01-12 15:12:02 UTC
*** Bug 1022191 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 13 Jan Synacek 2016-07-12 12:33:31 UTC
Already upstream (see https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/9ef15026c0e7e6600372056c43442c99ec53746e + related commits later).

For RHEL-7, the backport would need a lot more additional testing.

Comment 16 Jan Synacek 2017-01-24 13:29:54 UTC
I just realized that backporting is not possible, because, in RHEL7, we still use systemd-shutdownd... Unless there's a strong business reason, we will not re-implement the functionality in RHEL7.