ubuntu hangs while shutting down

[Tapas Mishra]

On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 4:58 AM, Avi Greenbury <lists at avi.co> wrote:
> 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?
>
The screen is having a theme which is same as the starting screen
while booting when it hangs.