[Tutor] Complete Shutdown

[Steven D'Aprano]

Alan Gauld wrote:
> 
> "Chris King" <g.nius.ck at gmail.com> wrote
> 
>>     How do I completely shutdown a computer without administrative 
>> rights using a simple python script.
> 
> If you have such a computer get rid of it, it fails the most basic test
> of a secure operating system. No program that runs upon it could
> ever be relied upon!

I'm not so sure about that... I think a personal computer which didn't 
allow ordinary, unprivileged users to safely shut it down would be 
worse. One shouldn't need to be root (or Administrator) to turn your own 
laptop or desktop off! Do we really want Aunt Tilly just flicking the 
power switch when she wants to turn her computer off?

Of course in a multi-user system, things are more complicated, and nor 
do you want arbitrary programs to be able to shut down your computer. 
Imagine if your browser could turn your computer off. Imagine if 
arbitrary websites could turn your computer off. Chaos and pain everywhere!

A bit like running IE 6 really :)


An interesting question would be, given that you do have administrator 
rights to log out/reboot/shut down, how would you do so from Python? The 
solution will depend on the OS and possibly the window manager, but 
other than that, I'm completely out of ideas.


-- 
Steven