systemctl-halt

Halt the system

$ systemctl halt

$ systemctl halt -f

$ systemctl halt -f --no-wall

$ systemctl halt -ff

$ systemctl halt --when 23:00

$ systemctl halt --when +2h

$ systemctl halt --when cancel

systemctl halt [OPTIONS]

systemctl halt shuts down and halts the system, stopping the OS kernel but leaving hardware powered on. This differs from poweroff, which completely powers down the machine, and reboot, which restarts the system.
With one `--force`, services are not gracefully stopped. With two `--force` flags, filesystems are not unmounted and may cause data loss.

-f, --force

Skip graceful service shutdown

Immediate halt without cleanup (dangerous)

Don't send wall message to users

Schedule halt at specific time or offset

Halt leaves the system powered but unresponsive; manual power-off is required. Double-force mode risks data corruption. Scheduled operations can be cancelled with `--when cancel`.

The halt subcommand provides a systemd-native way to halt the system, integrating with the scheduled shutdown mechanism and wall notification system.

systemctl-poweroff(1), systemctl-reboot(1), halt(8)