shutdown and log out not working Ubuntu 11.10

[Colin Law]

On 31 October 2011 16:25, G. <pegngaryubuntu at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 5:12 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> 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
>>
>
>
> Thanks for the details.  This is a normal shut down.  I hold the power
> button for a second and then it shuts down.  11.10 is taking longer
> than previous versions, maybe 30 seconds.  But no disk checks
> afterwards.

So just to check, in the indicator-session dropdown you see Logout and
Shutdown, but selecting either of these does absolutely nothing?

Have a look in the logs (log file viewer, syslog) to see if anything
is added to the log when you click logout or shutdown.

Colin