Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del in ESX 4.0 service console powers down all running VMs on host and reboots host

I ran into this and figured I'd share. Not a good thing to find out on a late night.

 Symptom:

Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del in the ESX 4.0 service console, whether the ESX host is in maintenance mode or not, can cause:

1. All virtual machines running on the host to power down.
2. ESX host to reboot.

Resolution:
 
This is a known issue which is resolved in VMware ESX 4.0, Patch ESX400-201002402-BG.


If you cannot immediately patch your ESX host, disable the option to Reboot the host on Ctrl+Alt+Del on the ESX host:

1. Log in to the ESX host via KVM, SSH or by accessing the console directly.
2. Open the file /etc/inittab using a text editor such as vi or nano.
3. Edit /etc/inittab by placing a # symbol in front of the line ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now so that it reads:
   
   # Trap CTRL-ALT-DELETE
   # ca::ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t3 -r now
   
4. Save the file and exit the text editor.
5. Force the configuration changes to take effect without rebooting the host, by executing init q

This information came from KB Article: 1018950