Disable [CTRL-ALT-DELETE] in Ubuntu
We’ve got a KVM with both Windows and Linux servers connected to it. I walked up, shook the mouse and pressed CTRL + ALT + DEL to log in… but forgot the KVM was left with one of the Linux boxes as the active session. Oops…
Broadcast message from root@aboveaverageidiot (unknown) at 12:34 ... The system is going down for reboot NOW! Control-Alt-Delete pressed
Once the machine was back up, I came out of hiding and it was time to disable the instant, no confirmation required reboot. Most of the tutorials suggest opening /etc/event.d/control-alt-delete and commenting out a line. Simple. Problem is, that file did not exist on this server.
Eventually, a bug report cleared everything up:
...The path "/etc/event.d/control-alt-delete" needs to be changed to "/etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf". On a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 Server, /etc/event.d/ does not exist...
So, long story short, if your Ubuntu server does not have /etc/event.d/control-alt-delete, check and see if /etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf is there. If so, then just comment out (by prefixing the line with #):
exec shutdown -r now "Control-Alt-Delete pressed"
Save the file and that’s it. No restart or anything else is required.
Hi bigtone,
its an old thread, I know, but just having had the same problem I stumbled upon it and saw that there is a small typo in the 2nd to last para beginning with “So, long story…”:
the entry should read /etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf and not /etc/event.d/control-alt-delete.conf. 🙂
Greetings, Ja.
You’re right! Thanks for bringing that up. Post has been modified. 🙂
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I tried this on an Ubuntu machine hosting the Android platform, basically an Android tablet, with a USB keyboard plugged in. Even after commenting out the “exec…” line in the file /etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf, the system still gets rebooted if I press Ctrl+Alt+Del. Interestingly, after the reboot, the contents of the file /etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf are restored to the original version, i.e., the # I put in to comment out the line was gone.
Any ideas?
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