Shutting down the system
To shut down a running &debian-gnu; system, you must not reboot with the
reset switch on the front or back of your computer, or just turn off
the computer. &debian-gnu; should be shut down in a controlled manner,
otherwise files might get lost and/or disk damage might occur. If you run a
desktop environment, there is usually an option to log out
available from the application menu that allows you to shutdown (or reboot)
the system.
Alternatively you can press the key combination
Ctrl Alt Del
or Control
Shift Power on Macintosh
systems. A last option is to log in as root and type one of the
commands poweroff, halt or
shutdown -h now if either of the key combinations do not
work or you prefer to type commands; use reboot to reboot
the system.