Control use of the Control Alt Delete on Ubuntu 12.04

When I am rushing through the KVM switch in the server room I do not want my Windows login to be mistaken for a reboot on my Ubuntu servers. It seems the norm the Linux distributions have a setting that will issue the shutdown -r command if a control-alt-delete key sequence is detected. Before upstart we would modify this within the /etc/inittab file; in many newer distributions the upstart service control daemon now replaces the inittab file and in Ubuntu server 12.04, the LTS version, we would edit the /etc/init/control-alt-delete.conf. The standard file includes the line:

exec shutdown -r “Control-Alt-Del pressed” 

If we wanted this ignored we could delete the file, but perhaps easier would be to keep it as documentation and change the exec line to read :

exec false 

, either way the effect is immediate and no need for a reboot or reload.