Shutdown: i must press a key to poweroff.

[Carl Friis-Hansen]

Francesco Bolzoni wrote:
> Hi all.
> I own an ACER 7520G notebook, with ubuntu 8.10.
> Everytime i want shutdown the sistem, if i don't press the enter key the
> system stay there without poweroff.
> Yesterday, I forget to do itand system wait for the key for about 4
> hours. Just after i press the enter key it poweroff.
> 
> I had ubuntu 8.04 also, but theren't the need to press the key to
> poweroff.
> 
> Any suggestion ?

I noticed the same problem on a Toshiba laptop. I haven't hat the 
enchantment to actually check the reasons. However, I assume it has 
something to do with ACPI and a process that will not terminate and thus 
the criteria for the final halt is missing. I think I would try to shut 
it down in a controlled way and thereby see if you get a pointer. 
Something like:
Remove spash and quet from boot line.
Diable gdm.
Reboot
Login as normal user.
sudo shutdown -h now

You might find this at the end:
* Sending all processes the KILL signal....            [OK]
* Unmounting temporary file systems........            [OK]
* Deactivating sqap........................            [OK]
* Unmounting local file systems............            [OK]
* Will halt
halt: Unable to iterate IDE devices: No such file or directory
[  146.989279] System halted.

and then we are still sitting there sucking power.

It is a wild guess, but what if the ACPI powers down the IDE and 
therefore leaving the OS unable to check if *all* IDE devices really are 
down?

At least, if this error message is the same on your computer, it should 
give us an idea where to search.
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       | Carl Friis-Hansen               | Fiskeryd Nybygget |
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