shutdown and log out not working Ubuntu 11.10

[Colin Law]

On 31 October 2011 15:35, G. <pegngaryubuntu at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 2:53 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On 31 October 2011 13:40, G. <pegngaryubuntu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 2:24 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>> On 31 October 2011 13:07, G. <pegngaryubuntu at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> I upgraded to 11.10 from 11.04.  Now when you try to log out or
>>>>> shutdown, I get nowhere.  If I hit the off switch on the laptop Ubuntu
>>>>> shuts down, however.
>>>>
>>>> Do you mean it just powers off, or does it do a normal shutdown?
>>
>> You did not answer this question
>
> I would say it just powers off, but I am not sure I know the difference.

A power off will happen with no disk or screen activity, it will just
die.  Usually you will have to hold the power button down for several
seconds to invoke this, rather than 'hitting' the button which may
well .  A normal shutdown will take at least a few seconds (it takes
about 10 on my machine) and will probably involve the screen changing,
scrolling Ubuntu dots and so on.  I presume that you know what a
normal power down is like from the operation prior to the problem
occurring.

Also if you have forced a power off without going through a normal
power down then on restart you should see it checking the disk to
clean up the file system.  You will likely see messages about inodes
and so on.

Colin