Comment 49 for bug 880240

Ok, I've worked my way all the way through this bug now, and I have to conclude this is behavior we can't/shouldn't change.

- The 'shutdown' command has three options: '-h' (halt or power off), '-H' (halt), and '-P' (power off).
- The 'halt' command maps to -H, by design.
- The 'poweroff' command maps to -P, by design.
- The /etc/default/halt configuration *only* affects the behavior when neither -H nor -P has been specified.
- There is no way to make 'halt' by itself map to 'poweroff', without making it impossible to do a real 'halt'.
- These are all standard options that shouldn't be changed.

So I'm closing this bug report as 'wontfix'. The current behavior is inconsistent with previous upstart behavior, but that behavior was buggy. The current behavior is correct, and I'm afraid people will just have to learn that 'halt' doesn't mean what you were led to believe it means.

If you want the system to poweroff, you need to run either 'shutdown -h now', 'halt -p', or 'poweroff'. All three commands work. 'halt -p' is the shortest and probably the most compatible with existing muscle memory.