Support halt/poweroff/reboot binaries for System_Shutdown()

[Hackebein]

Some systems based on buildroot (ex. RancherOS) and alpine linux have no binary like /sbin/shutdown, instead they use /sbin/halt (shutdown), /sbin/poweroff (shutdown with ACPI) and /sbin/reboot (reboot).
I prefere to add a case to switch to the USERWORLD binaries without add the complete USERWORLD cases.

[oliverkurth]

Thanks for your input. I don't quite understand what you mean with

I prefere to add a case to switch to the USERWORLD binaries without add the complete USERWORLD cases

Can you elaborate? What do you mean with "USERWORLD binaries"?

[Hackebein]

Thanks for your fast answer.

I talking about this function: lib/system/systemLinux.c#L379 System_Shutdown()

I can switch to the /sbin/halt and /sbin/reboot binaries if i define USERWORLD, but that activate all USERWORLD cases. Based on this post it seems to be a bad idea.

ravindravmw (Contributor) on 29 Jan 2016
USERWORLD define is used by other VMware products that use this code. This is not relevant when one is building open-vm-tools. I'm sure you would get lots of compilation errors when you use that define. You should not need to use that define for building open-vm-tools.

[oliverkurth]

Oh, I understand. I agree with @ravindravmw , defining USERWORLD is a very bad idea.

I filed an internal bug for this. I think a good solution would be to make this configurable. Right now you would need to patch the code here:

open-vm-tools/open-vm-tools/lib/system/systemLinux.c

Line 389 in 8c0cc53

cmd = "/sbin/shutdown -r now";

[Hackebein]

Is there any further information about the current status?

[oliverkurth]

Hello @Hackebein ,

we do have this issue in our queue, but I am sorry, it's probably not going to be addressed any time. soon. There are no other requests to change this. So my suggestion is to work around this for now, either by patching as suggested above, or provide a script called /sbin/shutdown that does the desired action.

[oliverkurth]

Btw, if you want you can also provide a patch via a pull request to fix this, for example by making this configurable.

[lflare]

It should be a fairly easy switch to excute /sbin/halt if it detects buildroot.

[ncopa]

Something like this?

diff --git a/open-vm-tools/configure.ac b/open-vm-tools/configure.ac
index dba033b1..3aa6a87f 100644
--- a/open-vm-tools/configure.ac
+++ b/open-vm-tools/configure.ac
@@ -1460,6 +1460,15 @@ else
     UDEVRULESDIR=""
 fi
 
+AC_ARG_WITH([shutdown-command],
+            [AS_HELP_STRING([--with-shutdown-command=COMMAND],
+                            [command to perform shutdown])],
+            [AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED([SHUTDOWN_COMMAND], ["$withval"], [])])
+AC_ARG_WITH([reboot-command],
+            [AS_HELP_STRING([--with-reboot-command=COMMAND],
+                            [command to perform reboot])],
+            [AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED([REBOOT_COMMAND], ["$withval"], [])])
+
 if test "x$enable_resolutionkms" = "xauto"; then
    enable_resolutionkms="no"
 fi
diff --git a/open-vm-tools/lib/system/systemLinux.c b/open-vm-tools/lib/system/systemLinux.c
index a688ab25..67100a1a 100644
--- a/open-vm-tools/lib/system/systemLinux.c
+++ b/open-vm-tools/lib/system/systemLinux.c
@@ -307,7 +307,9 @@ System_Shutdown(Bool reboot)  // IN: "reboot or shutdown" flag
    char *cmd;
 
    if (reboot) {
-#if defined(sun)
+#if defined(REBOOT_COMMAND)
+      cmd = REBOOT_COMMAND;
+#elif defined(sun)
       cmd = "/usr/sbin/shutdown -g 0 -i 6 -y";
 #elif defined(USERWORLD)
       cmd = "/bin/reboot";
@@ -315,7 +317,9 @@ System_Shutdown(Bool reboot)  // IN: "reboot or shutdown" flag
       cmd = "/sbin/shutdown -r now";
 #endif
    } else {
-#if __FreeBSD__
+#if defined(SHUTDOWN_COMMAND)
+      cmd = SHUTDOWN_COMMAND;
+#elif __FreeBSD__
       cmd = "/sbin/shutdown -p now";
 #elif defined(sun)
       cmd = "/usr/sbin/shutdown -g 0 -i 5 -y";