I am using a virtual server from Rose Hosting.  It runs Centos 3.  When I try to reboot, it fails with a mesage:

• init: /dev/initctl: no such file or directory

Running:

• mkfifo /dev/initctl

seems to have corrected the problem.  I'm not sure whether I eventually ran "reboot -f" or "init 6" to reboot.

UPDATE 9/4/2008: No, the mkfifo did not do it.  Running "reboot -f" simply reboots without doing the shutdown sequence.  Think of it as a front-panel reboot.  It turns out that some VPS (virtual private servers) use a hacked edition of init, that doesn't actually read /dev/initctl.

Running "reboot" or "init 6" still gets

init: timeout opening/writing control channel /dev/initctl

after running mkfifo.