In article ,
Jason L. wrote:
:I would like to know if it's possible at all to setup a user account
:to shutdown a machine.

Yes, but the user will need to be root or else be given the
necessary "capabilities" or else a suid program must be used.

At it's heart, shutting down the system is a function of
the uadmin(2) system call with the A_SHUTDOWN shutdown command

uadmin fails if any of the following are true:

EPERM The calling process does not have super-user privilege.

Playing with script ownerships and so on only gets you the fluff
that surrounds the invocation of the uadmin command. You have to dig
deeper than that.

I notice that you do not specify the model of machine you are using.
If you are using any workstation from the Indigo^2 and after
(but NOT the original Indigo as far as I remember), then the power button
is a "soft-power", and the system will be shut down -properly- if the
power button is pressed.
csh is bad drugs.