How do I gracefully exit/shutdown a "remote" machine?

[Walter Dnes]

  Well it's not really that remote, but it doesn't have a monitor.  I
have 3 PC's in my den.  One is an old PII that runs OS/2 strictly for
Galactic Civilizations (it's a time-waster, but I enjoy it).  It also
used to run some old DOS games and Chessmaster 3000 (Windows 3.1).  I've
moved the DOS games to "dosbox" under linux.  Chessmaster 3000 dies
under WINE, but Windows 3.1 installs under dosbox, and it runs
Chessmater 3000 just fine (and whups me every time, dammit).  The PII
shares a KVM switch with my P4 which, as of this weekend, is my main
machine.

  That leaves a PIII, hanging off the same 4-port router-cum-ADSL-modem
as the P4.  There are only 2 cables on the KVM switch, so I ssh in to
the PIII.  The PIII is now relegated to emergency backup duty.  It has
exactly 1/4 the speed and 1/4 the RAM of my 1.8 ghz 512 meg P4.

  To keep the PIII functional as a "hot backup" machine, I boot it once
a week, ssh into it from the P4, su to root, run gentoo linux updates,
and shut it down.  What happens is that "halt -p" shuts down the PIII
and I have to go to another tty (on the P4), "ps -ef", get the PID of
the ssh logon to the PIII, and issue a "kill -3" on it.  I've tried
stuff like "nohup halt -p &", followed by a couple of quick "exit"
commands.  However, the quick exit seems to kill the "halt" process.  Is
there a "graceful" way to shut down the PIII without leaving a dead ssh
login?

  Failing that, is there a linux app that will host or emulate OS/2 Warp
sufficiently well that I can run Galactic Civilizations on it and get
rid of the old PII clunker?

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
My musings on technology and security at http://tech_sec.blog.ca
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