Preventing System Reboot with Ctrl-Alt-Del

The "Three-Finger-Salute" or, the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Del is typically mapped to the command /sbin/shutdown -r now. In other words, it reboots your system. Sometimes this may be unwanted behavior, so this tip shows you how to disable, or remap that key combination.

The file we need to edit is /etc/inittab. Find the line that says

ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -r now

and simply comment it out by putting a # in front of it. Or, if you prefer, you can change the /sbin/shutdown -r now part to another command.

Lastly, we need to tell the init process about these changes.

Code Listing 1: Reloading init

# /sbin/init q

From http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030421-newsletter.xml

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