systemd systemd-inhibit 1 systemd-inhibit Execute a program with an inhibition lock taken systemd-inhibit OPTIONS COMMAND ARGUMENTS systemd-inhibit OPTIONS --list 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. 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, block-weak or delay-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.conf5. 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. Returns the exit status of the executed program. # systemd-inhibit wodim foobar.iso This burns the ISO image foobar.iso on a CD using wodim1, and inhibits system sleeping, shutdown and idle while doing so. systemd1 logind.conf5