SYSTEMD-INHIBIT(1)

NAME
systemd-inhibit - Execute a program with an inhibition lock taken

SYNOPSIS

systemd-inhibit [OPTIONS...] [COMMAND] [ARGUMENTS...]

systemd-inhibit [OPTIONS...] [--list]

DESCRIPTION

systemd-inhibit may be used to execute a program with a shutdown, sleep, or idle inhibitor lock taken. The lock will be acquired before the specified command line is executed and released afterwards.

Inhibitor locks may be used to block or delay system sleep and shutdown requests from the user, as well as automatic idle handling of the OS. This is useful to avoid system suspends while an optical disc is being recorded, or similar operations that should not be interrupted.

For more information see Inhibitor Locks[1].

OPTIONS

The following options are understood:

--what=
    Takes a colon-separated list of one or more operations to inhibit: "shutdown", "sleep", "idle", "handle-power-key", "handle-suspend-key", "handle-hibernate-key", "handle-lid-switch", for inhibiting reboot/power-off/halt/kexec/soft-reboot, suspending/hibernating, the automatic idle detection, or the low-level handling of the power/sleep key and the lid switch, respectively. If omitted, defaults to "idle:sleep:shutdown".

--who=
    Takes a short, human-readable descriptive string for the program taking the lock. If not passed, defaults to the command line string.

--why=
    Takes a short, human-readable descriptive string for the reason for taking the lock. Defaults to "Unknown reason".

--mode=
    Takes "block", "delay", or "block-weak" and describes how the lock is applied. If "block" is used (the default), the lock prohibits any of the requested operations without time limit, and only privileged users may override it. If "delay" is used, the lock can only delay the requested operations for a limited time. If the time elapses, the lock is ignored and the operation executed. The time limit may be specified in logind.conf(5). Note that "delay" is only available for "sleep" and "shutdown". In addition, the weak variants will automatically and silently be bypassed under some circumstances.

--list
    Lists all active inhibition locks instead of acquiring one.

--no-ask-password
    Do not query the user for authentication for privileged operations.

--no-pager
    Do not pipe output into a pager.

--no-legend
    Do not print the legend, i.e. column headers and the footer with hints.

-h, --help
    Print a short help text and exit.

--version
    Print a short version string and exit.

EXIT STATUS

Returns the exit status of the executed program.

EXAMPLE

    # systemd-inhibit wodim foobar.iso

This burns the ISO image foobar.iso on a CD using wodim(1), and inhibits system sleeping, shutdown and idle while doing so.

ENVIRONMENT

$SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL
    The maximum log level of emitted messages (messages with a higher log level, i.e. less important ones, will be suppressed). Takes a comma-separated list of values. A value may be either one of (in order of decreasing importance) emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice, info, debug, or an integer in the range 0...7. See syslog(3) for more information. Each value may optionally be prefixed with one of console, syslog, kmsg or journal followed by a colon to set the maximum log level for that specific log target (e.g. SYSTEMD_LOG_LEVEL=debug,console:info specifies to log at debug level except when logging to the console which should be at info level). Note that the global maximum log level takes priority over any per target maximum log levels.

$SYSTEMD_LOG_COLOR
    A boolean. If true, messages written to the tty will be colored according to priority.

    This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal, because journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will color messages based on the log level on their own.

$SYSTEMD_LOG_TIME
    A boolean. If true, console log messages will be prefixed with a timestamp.

    This setting is only useful when messages are written directly to the terminal or a file, because journalctl(1) and other tools that display logs will attach timestamps based on the entry metadata on their own.

$SYSTEMD_LOG_LOCATION
    A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with a filename and line number in the source code where the message originates.

    Note that the log location is often attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.

$SYSTEMD_LOG_TID
    A boolean. If true, messages will be prefixed with the current numerical thread ID (TID).

    Note that the this information is attached as metadata to journal entries anyway. Including it directly in the message text can nevertheless be convenient when debugging programs.

$SYSTEMD_LOG_TARGET
    The destination for log messages. One of console (log to the attached tty), console-prefixed (log to the attached tty but with prefixes encoding the log level and "facility", see syslog(3), kmsg (log to the kernel circular log buffer), journal (log to the journal), journal-or-kmsg (log to the journal if available, and to kmsg otherwise), auto (determine the appropriate log target automatically, the default), null (disable log output).

$SYSTEMD_LOG_RATELIMIT_KMSG
    Whether to ratelimit kmsg or not. Takes a boolean. Defaults to "true". If disabled, systemd will not ratelimit messages written to kmsg.

$SYSTEMD_PAGER, $PAGER
    Pager to use when --no-pager is not given. $SYSTEMD_PAGER is used if set; otherwise $PAGER is used. If neither $SYSTEMD_PAGER nor $PAGER are set, a set of well-known pager implementations is tried in turn, including less(1) and more(1), until one is found. If no pager implementation is discovered, no pager is invoked. Setting those environment variables to an empty string or the value "cat" is equivalent to passing --no-pager.

    Note: if $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, $SYSTEMD_PAGER and $PAGER can only be used to disable the pager (with "cat" or ""), and are otherwise ignored.

$SYSTEMD_LESS
    Override the options passed to less (by default "FRSXMK").

    Users might want to change two options in particular:

    K
        This option instructs the pager to exit immediately when Ctrl+C is pressed. To allow less to handle Ctrl+C itself to switch back to the pager command prompt, unset this option.

        If the value of $SYSTEMD_LESS does not include "K", and the pager that is invoked is less, Ctrl+C will be ignored by the executable, and needs to be handled by the pager.

    X
        This option instructs the pager to not send termcap initialization and deinitialization strings to the terminal. It is set by default to allow command output to remain visible in the terminal even after the pager exits. Nevertheless, this prevents some pager functionality from working, in particular paged output cannot be scrolled with the mouse.

    Note that setting the regular $LESS environment variable has no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.

    See less(1) for more discussion.

$SYSTEMD_LESSCHARSET
    Override the charset passed to less (by default "utf-8", if the invoking terminal is determined to be UTF-8 compatible).

    Note that setting the regular $LESSCHARSET environment variable has no effect for less invocations by systemd tools.

$SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE
    Common pager commands like less(1), in addition to "paging", i.e. scrolling through the output, support opening of or writing to other files and running arbitrary shell commands. When commands are invoked with elevated privileges, for example under sudo(8) or pkexec(1), the pager becomes a security boundary. Care must be taken that only programs with strictly limited functionality are used as pagers, and unintended interactive features like opening or creation of new files or starting of subprocesses are not allowed. "Secure mode" for the pager may be enabled as described below, if the pager supports that (most pagers are not written in a way that takes this into consideration). It is recommended to either explicitly enable "secure mode" or to completely disable the pager using --no-pager or PAGER=cat when allowing untrusted users to execute commands with elevated privileges.

    This option takes a boolean argument. When set to true, the "secure mode" of the pager is enabled. In "secure mode", LESSSECURE=1 will be set when invoking the pager, which instructs the pager to disable commands that open or create new files or start new subprocesses. Currently only less(1) is known to understand this variable and implement "secure mode".

    When set to false, no limitation is placed on the pager. Setting SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=0 or not removing it from the inherited environment may allow the user to invoke arbitrary commands.

    When $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE is not set, systemd tools attempt to automatically figure out if "secure mode" should be enabled and whether the pager supports it. "Secure mode" is enabled if the effective UID is not the same as the owner of the login session, see geteuid(2) and sd_pid_get_owner_uid(3), or when running under sudo(8) or similar tools ($SUDO_UID is set [2]). In those cases, SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE=1 will be set and pagers which are not known to implement "secure mode" will not be used at all. Note that this autodetection only covers the most common mechanisms to elevate privileges and is intended as convenience. It is recommended to explicitly set $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE or disable the pager.

    Note that if the $SYSTEMD_PAGER or $PAGER variables are to be honoured, other than to disable the pager, $SYSTEMD_PAGERSECURE must be set too.

$SYSTEMD_COLORS
    Takes a boolean argument. When true, systemd and related utilities will use colors in their output, otherwise the output will be monochrome. Additionally, the variable can take one of the following special values: "16", "256" to restrict the use of colors to the base 16 or 256 ANSI colors, respectively. This can be specified to override the automatic decision based on $TERM and what the console is connected to.

$SYSTEMD_URLIFY
    The value must be a boolean. Controls whether clickable links should be generated in the output for terminal emulators supporting this. This can be specified to override the decision that systemd makes based on $TERM and other conditions.

SEE ALSO

systemd(1), logind.conf(5)

NOTES

1.  Inhibitor Locks
    https://systemd.io/INHIBITOR_LOCKS

2.  It is recommended for other tools to set and check $SUDO_UID as appropriate, treating it is a common interface.