Public bug reported: Running on Xenial, i've found that none of the methods of interacting with systemd's power functions send the wall message as they're supposed to. I have tried all of the following and none of them produce the message:
reboot shutdown -r shutdown -r +1 shutdown -r +1 'testing' shutdown -r 1 shutdown -r now shutdown -r now 'testing' systemctl reboot systemctl reboot --message 'testing' There are no errors displayed on the screen after running the command. If i check the journal after the system comes back up i can find no errors there either. A message DOES appear in the journal, if i use `systemctl reboot --message`: May 07 23:11:18 mysrv sudo[1244]: dana : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/dana ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/bin/systemctl reboot --message testing May 07 23:11:18 mysrv sudo[1244]: pam_unix(sudo:session): session opened for user root by dana(uid=0) May 07 23:11:18 mysrv systemd-logind[634]: System is rebooting (testing). I noticed that if i ran these commands without `sudo`, it'd complain about PolicyKit, so i installed that, thinking maybe it'd help. It did not. As another experiment, i added a call to `wall` to `systemd- reboot.service` via drop-in as below. It works, but i don't consider it an acceptable solution, because it's a hard-coded message and it doesn't show the name of the user that triggered the reboot. [Service] ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/wall testing It's also worth pointing out that i'm running these commands over SSH; i don't have access to the physical machine right now. OS version: Ubuntu 16.04.2 (Xenial) server Relevant packages (i hope): dbus 1.10.6-1ubuntu3.3 libdbus-1-3:amd64 1.10.6-1ubuntu3.3 libdbus-glib-1-2:amd64 0.106-1 libqt5dbus5:amd64 5.5.1+dfsg-16ubuntu7.2 libsystemd0:amd64 229-4ubuntu17 python3-systemd 231-2build1 systemd 229-4ubuntu17 systemd-sysv 229-4ubuntu17 PS: There are some related tickets in the system already, but none of them seemed to describe the exact behaviour i was seeing (they were missing wall messages only in certain circumstances — mine are ALWAYS missing). I'm linking them here for completeness, feel free to close this obv if you consider it a duplicate of one of them: Bug # 1448070 Bug # 1512235 There is also this Debian bug, which might be the same, though i have confirmed that this affects not just the SysV-style commands but even `systemctl` itself: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=810608 ** Affects: systemd (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1689227 Title: systemd power functions do not send broadcast (wall) message To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1689227/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs