On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 12:28 AM, Fons Adriaensen <fons@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > * What is the purpose of halt.target ? It stops the system > but leaves power on. AFAICS, it's not possible to restart > without a power cycle... Under sysvinit halt and poweroff were the same. Under systemd 'halt' halts the machine, whereas 'poweroff' first halts the machine and then switches off the power. I use 'halt' a lot to debug shutdown bugs, don't know if it has other uses. Manually power cycling a halted machine is safe. -t