Comments on: How to disable CTRL-ALT-DEL from rebooting a Linux system

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 13:43:25 +0000

I got Ubuntu 9.10 Karma, and the /etc/event.d directory does not exist so I looked in the /etc/init directory instead. I edited the “control-alt-delete.conf” file /etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf and changed the line

exec shutdown -r now “Control-Alt-Delete pressed”

echo “CONTROL-ALT-DELETE DISABLED”

and save the file. The init daemon should automagically reload this change, but just to be sure run this command:

initctl reload-configuration

It works for me. I hope it works for you in the same Ubuntu version.

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[...] Resolving the CTRL+ALT+DEL default [...]

By: mnadeau

mnadeau — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:17:09 +0000

Thanks Marius,
Working mostly with Windoze, I usually press CTRL+ALT+DEL and ENTER to lock the screen when I finish working on a server or when leaving my Workstation.
This is going to save me (and my users) a lot of grief

By: bbraski

bbraski — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 21:49:47 +0000

Since I pulled this up with a Google search I thought I’d add that after Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgy”, Ubuntu has moved to Upstart as it’s daemon controller. Inittab no longer exists.

Instead you modify /etc/event.d/control-alt-delete. Either delete, comment out these lines:

start on control-alt-delete

exec /sbin/shutdown – now “Control-Alt-Delete pressed”

If you remove the lines, you may want to keep a copy somewhere. I tend to keep copies of config files I change (especially if I’m mucking around out of curiosity) in a directory in my home folder, chown’d to my regular user (because I’m anal like that).

By: nessus

nessus — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:15:36 +0000

You say “Also what I donâ€™t like about this shortcut is that you donâ€™t need to be logged in (no user/password needed – but only console access) to reboot the system.” This seems a little silly, because someone with console access has full ability to reboot the system anyway (it’s called the power switch). Ctrl-alt-del just lets them do a controlled reboot where the system can settle itself instead of power cycling. So disabling it for this reason is stupid.

(disabling it because you’re worried you’ll hit it by mistake makes more sense.)

By: Bernardo

Bernardo — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 20:42:21 +0000

I’m using SLES9 and I have the same problem with CTRL-ALT-DEL. Has anyone figured out how to make the echo to work every time?.
Thxs.

By: EP

EP — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 20:31:39 +0000

Well, i tried this on Fedora today and it worked perfectly fine. Simply cant figure out how to resove this with SUSE…

By: - Marius -

- Marius - — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 07:21:51 +0000

Hmm… Very strange. Let me know how that went on RH. I have not tested it myself on Suse and don’t have where to test it at this time…

By: EP

EP — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 16:29:49 +0000

Aha… I am GMT -5…

I am using SLES 9 (will try to test on redhat as well). Pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL causes the message to print, but only once. Anytime you press CTRL-ALT-DEL again, nothing happens. Only after running init q will this get reset, and CTRL-ALT-DEL will again print the message (only once, until the next init q…)

By: - Marius -

- Marius - — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 22:11:51 +0000

This is strange… It works properly on my side (tested with Debian / Ubuntu). What distribution are you using? does it show an error? or it keeps rebooting even after the change?
About the timezone, the server were this site is hosted is has that set to GMT+3 (as my local timezone).