ubuntu hangs while shutting down

[Avi Greenbury]

Tapas Mishra wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 3:06 AM, Avi Greenbury <lists at avi.co> wrote:
> > Tapas Mishra wrote:
> >> I am using Ubuntu 11.10 and when I shut it down sudo reboot it hangs
> >> while shutting down.
> >> I observed for more than 30 minutes and it could not still shut down.
> >> What should I check?
> >
> > Do you know how far it gets through the shutdown? Are there any
> > messages on the screen at the time?
> >
> > Generally, /var/log/syslog, /var/log/messages and /var/log/dmesg are
> > not unreasonable places ot start looking.
> 
> ok I checked I know there should be a file /var/log/messages but this
> file does not exist on my
> system  don't know what might be broken any hint here will be helpful....
> 
> while I wanted to pastebin the file /var/log/syslog I got a message
> permission denied
> cat syslog > pastebinit
> bash: pastebinit: Permission denied

This is because the > operator causes the text to be written to file -
that command would cat syslog and write the output to a file called
'pastebinit'. Since you were (presumably) in /var/log at the time you
weren't permitted to create that file.

  cat syslog | pastebinit

was probably what you were after. Either way, there's no tmuch in
there (or syslog.1 in your subsequent mail) to suggest what's up -
what's on the screen while it hangs?

-- 
Avi