systemd-inhibit(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | EXAMPLE | ENVIRONMENT | SEE ALSO | NOTES | COLOPHON

SYSTEMD-INHIBIT(1)           systemd-inhibit           SYSTEMD-INHIBIT(1)

NAME         top

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

SYNOPSIS         top


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

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

DESCRIPTION         top

       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         top

       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. The "block-weak"
           inhibitor lock type is similar to "block" but is not enforced
           against operations initiated by privileged clients or those
           owned by the user that also owns the inhibitor lock. 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".

       --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         top

       Returns the exit status of the executed program.

EXAMPLE         top

           # 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         top

       $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         top

       systemd(1), logind.conf(5)

NOTES         top

        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.

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the systemd (systemd system and service
       manager) project.  Information about the project can be found at
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd⟩.  If you have a
       bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/#bugreports⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/systemd/systemd.git⟩ on 2025-08-11.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2025-08-11.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

systemd 258~rc2                                        SYSTEMD-INHIBIT(1)

Pages that refer to this page: systemd.directives(7)systemd.index(7)rpm-plugin-systemd-inhibit(8)