+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #475006 +++

Created an attachment (id=326004)
create /halt file if halt action was requested

When you request a halt action
/sbin/shutdown -h -H now
instead of halting system gets powered down

The problem comes from SysVinit-2.86-14

/etc/init.d/halt from initscripts-8.45.19.1.EL-1 has this line of code

[ -f /poweroff -o ! -f /halt ] && HALTARGS="$HALTARGS -p"

Which makes poweroff a default action in absence of /halt file. In my opinion this assumption is questionable for servers. Usually, after a power failure if a system BIOS has "Power recovery: LAST" setting, system can start automatically after power returns. If the action during shutdown was poweroff it would never happen, somebody would have to go to the server and press the power button. 

But back to shutdown problem. 
when /sbin/halt is called it properly creates /halt file if -p switch (power off) was not passed, so for /sbin/halt halt is default action, proper behavior, in my opinion. But when /sbin/shutdown called with -H switch it doesn't create /halt file, which it should.

Proposed patch is attached. I removed "usage" comment because it is not in sync with the actual source code

--- Additional comment from chepkov on 2008-12-06 17:10:41 EDT ---

Unfortunately, the approach doesn't work on kernel-xen. 
First, strcmp(halttype,HALT) code causes segmentation fault, because halttype
is uninitialized. But even after I fixed that, still kernel-xen powers down.

so, to reiterate the problem

/sbin/shutdown -h -H now doesn't halt the system

if on plain kernel you do touch /halt first, system halts as expected. No
workaround for kernel-xen