XShutdown: Reboot Actions

In the "Reboot actions" dialog, you may tell XShutdown not to use its internal reboot routine, but something else which you can specify. The items you specify here will appear in the XShutdown confirmation window; if you specify something different than "Default" in that window, the command you have configured here will be executed instead of the normal XShutdown reboot function.

This is especially useful if you have the IBM Boot Manager installed, which comes with OS/2. The Boot Manager can be activated from the command line by using the SETBOOT command (look into the OS/2 Command Reference to find out more).

In XShutdown's context, the "reboot to" function of this command can be handy. This function is accessed with the "/iba:<os>" option of SETBOOT, with "<os>" being the exact name of the operating system as it appears in the Boot Manager menu after system startup. By using this option, the system will reboot without showing the Boot Manager menu, but starting the specified partition directly.

For example, if you wish to boot to PC-DOS 7 directly, which carries the title "PC-DOS 7" in the Boot Manager menu, type at the command line:

setboot /iba:"PC-DOS 7"

Now, with this example, if you wish to make PC-DOS 7 a user reboot action of XShutdown, do the following:

Press the "New" button.
In the "Action description" field, enter whatever you wish to see in the XShutdown confirmation dialog (e.g. "PC-DOS 7").
In the "Action command line" field, enter the command to execute, in this case:
setboot /iba:"PC-DOS 7"
Press "OK". The item will appear in the XShutdown confirmation dialog the next time you attempt to shut down your system.

Important notes:

There is NO ERROR CHECKING, neither in the "Reboot actions" dialog, nor at the time of shutdown. If you misspell the command to be executed or use SETBOOT although Boot Manager is not installed, the system will simply hang after all windows have been closed.
If you don't know the exact titles of the Boot Manager partitions on your system, you can start FDISK from a command line and copy them from there.
The command you enter here is started after all windows have been closed and the INI files have been saved; however, file systems will not be released by XShutdown if you select a user reboot. XShutdown assumes that the program you specify here will release the file systems itself (i.e. call the DosShutdown API). SETBOOT will do this, for example.
The command you enter here is started via CMD.EXE with the /C parameter. This means that you may even execute a REXX script here, if you're really daring.
As always, if you wish to execute a command with resides in a directory not included in the PATH variable, you must specify the full path. For SETBOOT, this is not neccessary, because it resides in the OS2 directory.