RHEL 7 systemd: How to prevent root from rebooting until a prescribed action is taken

Solution Verified - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7

Issue

  • We don't want root to be able to casually reboot or poweroff the system
    Instead, the root user must be required to run a specific command to allow reboots

Resolution

Option 0: Open a support case and ask for BZ 1269726

Option 1: Create a custom service that must be manually disabled to allow shutdown

  1. Create a new unit file:   /etc/systemd/system/reboot-guard.service

    [Unit]
Description=Reboot Guard
[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/true
[Install]
RequiredBy=shutdown.target

  2. Create another new unit file:   /etc/systemd/system/start-reboot-guard.service

    [Unit]
Description=Start Reboot Guard
[Service]
ExecStart=/bin/systemctl enable reboot-guard
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

  3. Execute:   systemctl daemon-reload

  4. Execute:   systemctl enable reboot-guard start-reboot-guard

  5. Attempt to reboot or shutdown and notice that it fails, e.g.:

    [root]# systemctl reboot
Failed to issue method call: Transaction contains conflicting jobs 'stop' and 'start' for reboot.target. Probably contradicting requirement dependencies configured.
[root]# shutdown -h now
Failed to issue method call: Transaction contains conflicting jobs 'stop' and 'start' for poweroff.target. Probably contradicting requirement dependencies configured.

Broadcast message from root@example.com on pts/1 (Mon 2015-08-17 13:37:10 EDT):

The system is going down for power-off NOW!

    Note however that legacy tools (shutdown, reboot, poweroff, and halt) will still broadcast the wall message, despite the expected and desired failure

  6. To allow shutdowns, execute:   systemctl disable reboot-guard
    Example:

    [root]# systemctl poweroff
Failed to issue method call: Transaction contains conflicting jobs 'stop' and 'start' for poweroff.target. Probably contradicting requirement dependencies configured.
[root]# systemctl disable reboot-guard.service 
rm '/etc/systemd/system/shutdown.target.requires/reboot-guard.service'
[root]# systemctl poweroff
Broadcast message from root@example.com on pts/1 (Mon 2015-08-17 13:37:50 EDT):

The system is going down for system halt NOW!
[  OK  ] Started Show Plymouth Power Off Screen.
[  OK  ] Started Restore /run/initramfs.
[  OK  ] Stopped LSB: Bring up/down networking.
         Stopping Network Manager...
[  OK  ] Stopped Network Manager.
...
[  OK  ] Reached target Unmount All Filesystems.
[  OK  ] Stopped target Local File Systems (Pre).
         Stopping Remount Root and Kernel File Systems...
[  OK  ] Stopped Remount Root and Kernel File Systems.
[  OK  ] Reached target Shutdown.
Cannot finalize remaining file systems and devices, giving up.
dracut Warning: Killing all remaining processes
Powering off.
[ 4653.288570] Power down.

  7. Note that at startup start-reboot-guard.service will automatically re-enable reboot-guard.service

Option 2: Use reboot-guard, an UNSUPPORTED third-party application that prevents shutdown under specific configurable conditions

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