How to run a command just after shutdown or halt in Debian?

Question

I'm working with an embedded computer that has a Debian on it. I already manage to run a command just before it has booted and play the "bell" to tell that is ready to work, and for example try to connect to a service.

The problem is that I need to play the bell (or run any command/program) when the system is halted so is safe to un-plug the power. Is there any runscript that run just after halt?

Answer 1

If you have a look in /etc/init.d, you'll see a script called halt. I'm pretty certain that when /sbin/halt is called in a runlevel other than 0 or 6, it calls /sbin/shutdown, which runs this script (unless called with an -n flag). So maybe you could add your own hook into that script? Obviously, it would be before the final halt was called, but nothing runs after that, so maybe that's ok.

Another option would be to use the fact that all running processes get sent a SIGTERM followed (a second or so later) by a SIGKILL. So you could write a simple daemon that just sat there until given a SIGTERM, at which point it went "ping" and died.