Hi Bjoern. To get an alias to be "permanent", it depends on what shell you're using. For the korn-shell, place the alias in your .kshrc file under your home directory. For bash, put it in .bash_profile and .bashrc -- all of these files are executed by a shell whenever you have either a) just logged on and therefore have a "login shell" (.bash_profile and .kshrc fall into this category) or b) spawned a subshell (.bashrc and .kshrc fall into this category). There's more info in the man pages.
Anyway, the alias you mentioned: alias down="shutdown -h now" shouldn't be a security risk, since it will only work when you are "root". However to perform such an operation as a user, I suggest checking out the "sudo" package. Regards, -- Harmon
