Shutdown incomplete

Hello,

there’s one problem which I already ignored for some time and decided to try to solve now. My computer doesn’t shut down completly. The fans keep running and the screen doesn’t turn off. If I press the power button the computer ends up like after a xp-shutdown.

I found this using-acpi-force-boot-option - openSUSE Forum article. It tells “to add the option “acpi=force” without the quotation marks to /boot/grub/menu.lst on the line that ends with showopts.”
My menu.lst tells


# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Aug 22 17:44:02 CEST 2009
default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 (pae)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD252HJ_S17HJ1LS600344-part1 apm=off acpi=off mce=off barrier=off ide=nodma idewait=50 i8042.nomux psmouse.proto=bare irqpoll pci=nommconf resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD252HJ_S17HJ1LS600344-part5 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae
...

But it already has something with acpi in it… So should I replace acpi=off with acpi=force? Sorry if it’s a stupid question, but I don’t want to break something, especially not in GRUB.

Thanks in advance.

Should I have asked the question there? It told read-only in the link… Sorry if I posted it to the wrong place. :frowning:

First I think the place you posted is correct enough. :slight_smile:

Second IMHO you should indeed have only one acpi= clause in the kernel line, so replace *off *with *force. *Just test it, I do not think it will really screw up things, even when it does not cure your problem.

That reminds me of my encounter with this bug when I first attempted to add ‘acpi=force’ through the YaST Boot Loader. Hehe, wasn’t funny at the time, though! Which also reminds me, I still have to manually power down my computer when run level 0 is reached… so let’s try it again! rotfl!
This time I added the parameter with vim from the cli and it works! :stuck_out_tongue:

Very good! The learning curve is a bit steep, but after a while one can cope with these sort of things.

Does one have to do it in this certain way? I simply used “kdesu kwrite”.
The first time I wanted to change a file which belonged to root I changed the permissions for the editing (and then changed back). Well, I once had done a UNIX course, and that was one of the things I remembered… But it worked.

So, will try my luck now.

Both are good working practices. You use a different editor, but that does not matter. Using a terminal emulator and then su -, or using kdesu are both acknowledged ways of doing editing as root. I prefer vi, but that is also because of my long Unix experience. Others prefer kdesu, or the gnome equivalent.

While it seems that you do know how to manage with root very well, maybe this link mighty be intereseting: SDB:Login as root - openSUSE

Thanks for the link. :slight_smile:

After I changed the parameter the computer didn’t boot completly anymore, started to hang telling something like “Loading CPU frequencies” and even in the failsafe mode (which was unchanged) the last thing it told was something with HAL daemon, then nothing happend anymore. There is a small possibility that I was too impatient, but usually it boots faster. Luckily I had a Puppy Linux CD around and was able to change the setting back. Maybe at the weekend I’ll try again, but for now I should study and not to play around with some settings.

Hi, it took me a while to post again.
I run some tests, first without changing the settings, so the normal mode had “acpi=off” and failsafe nothing mentioning acpi.
Failsafe seemed to boot normal (small font, “background” during boot) but the last thing it displayed was “Loading CPU modules”. I waited several minutes, nothing changed. But I’m not sure if I ever used the failsafe mode before (so am not sure if it ever worked).
The normal boot took 56 seconds, but during the boot process it uses a big font and has no background picture. I don’t know how to explain it better. (For the installtion I used the failsafe option, maybe because of this?)

Well, so I changed two things in menu.lst. First I added “acpi=off” in failsafe, which made it boot in a bit under one minute. But when substituting “acpi=off” with “acpi=force” in the normal mode it caused the system to hang again, the last thing it told was “Starting HAL daemon”. I waited several minutes, but nothing happened anymore.

My processor is an AMD Athlon 64 (has this Cool’n’Quite feature) but used in 32bit. It should support some kind of power managment, shouldn’t it? In hardware information is tells for the CPU “power managment: ts fid vid ttp tm stc”. Is this any helpful?

I wondered if the problem could be the mainboard, so I saw some BIOS settings. Under POWER there are five entries:


Suspend Mode      [Auto]   ("S1 (POS) only", "S3 only")
ACPI Support      [ACPI v1.0]  ("ACPI v2.0","ACPI v3.0")
ACPI APIC support [Enabled]  (Disabled)

> APM Configuration   (Power Button Mode, Restore on AC Power Loss, Power On By...)
> Hardware Monitor    (temperatures and fan speeds, voltage)

Should I change something? Windows XP shuts down properly if that gives a hint (I guess not). Help is again appreciated, but I also survive with the incomplete shutdown of course. Just would be nice to know what the problem is.

Edit: So the menu.lst for openSUSE

# Modified by YaST2. Last modification on Sat Aug 22 17:44:02 CEST 2009
default 0
timeout 8
##YaST - generic_mbr
gfxmenu (hd0,0)/boot/message
##YaST - activate

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: linux###
title openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1 (pae)
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD252HJ_S17HJ1LS600344-part1 apm=off acpi=off mce=off barrier=off ide=nodma idewait=50 i8042.nomux psmouse.proto=bare irqpoll pci=nommconf resume=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD252HJ_S17HJ1LS600344-part5 splash=silent showopts vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae

###Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: failsafe###
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.1 - 2.6.27.29-0.1
    root (hd0,0)
    kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-SAMSUNG_HD252HJ_S17HJ1LS600344-part1 showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 x11failsafe vga=0x31a
    initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.27.29-0.1-pae

Don’t compare XP shutting down to a linux system peforming a shutdown.

I’ve met this problem many times.
Most of the times it’s enough to set ‘acpi=force’ instead of any other occurences of ‘acpi=’.
Then there’s this: Yast - System - /etc/sysconfig editor, search for ‘Power’ and shutdown and you’ll find some other options to experiment on.
Still there are machines that I cannot get to power of on shutdown. Some also lost this behaviour on install of a newer openSUSE version, or started showing it.

If you find out, please let us know.