Hi,
Am new to solaris.Can anyone explains me the difference between using init and shutdown command. As per my knowledge shutdown will give notification to users, is there anything apart from that.
thanks in advance.
shutdown is a wrapper that calls init. There is a delay and it can ask a final confirmation question. So you can change your mind at the last minute.
Shutdown also sends a message to the console informing all users that the system is about to go down. Any user with a terminal attached to the console will receive this message in that terminal.
Pls can you explain ur point more clearly..
What it means is that, if you give shutdown command in a solaris shell, then anyone connected to system shell will see a message on their screen that system is going down in 1 minute...then again after 30 seconds...
You can ssh to your test system and watch the screen. At the same time give shutdown command at console. See it yourself. 
thnks a lot ..
Init is also more flexible for switching run-levels... as I have to do because "startx" doesn't work on my Linux - gives some blah blah error about something. Being too lazy to fix it, I use "init 5" instead, which works just fine! (that's my Linux - init 5 means different things on different Unix's).
---------- Post updated at 08:46 PM ---------- Previous update was at 08:08 PM ----------
(actually, slightly inaccurate: init isn't more flexible (because you can specify a new run-level using shutdown) - but it's simpler to use init sometimes)