Ubuntu Dapper Shutdown issue

Hi All,

I have been tearing my hair out for a while now going through all the releases of Kubuntu, Hoary, Breezy and now Dapper 6.06.1 LTS and I have the annoying scenario that is that it doesnt shutdown properly and power off. I have a tri-boot with XP and Vista RC2 and they shutdown fine but ubuntu syncs the hard discs and just sits there. The only way to turn it off is hold the power button in (which is most annoying). I have an older model Intel 875 P-Neo mobo by MSI which has the latest BIOS update and drivers installed via Liveupdate Tool.

Can anyone point me in the right direction as to how I can tackle this as someone out there must know how to remedy this?

Thanks in advance.

You might need to load the APM module.
You might need to add 'acpi=force' to your kernel boot command line.

Can you post the output from 'lspci' and 'dmesg' and 'cat /proc/cpuinfo' please if the above doesn't help?

in terminal type

Code:

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dmesg

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are you getting acpi errors?
if so in grub boot menu - edit the menu (press e) and in hte kernel option add apm=force then press b to boot. Also check in bios for powermanagment settings.

Ubuntu edgy 6.10 is released thursday btw ;)

Cheers for the quick replies there guys. Sorry for the delay in posting back feedback on your suggestions but thought it best to reinstall Kubuntu yesterday and only had time to try the 'sudo modprobe apm' so far without success. It just came up with an error saying no such kernel module or something so am I to presume that my BIOS doesnt support APM and only works with ACPI?

I think I remember fiddling with my BIOS ACPI settings before a while back and I think it didnt resolve the issue, it just made Windows hang on shutdown as well I think. Will try it again anyways.

I will have a lot more time this evening to try the other suggestions and if that doesn't work will post output from those commands as Geoff suggested.

Thanks.

Here is the spec of the machine that has problems (if it will help to resolve this problem)

Mainboard:
http://www.digital-daily.com/motherboard/msi-875p-neo/

Intel P4 3.2Ghz HT
2Gig (4x512MB) DDR400 ram
Nvidia Gforce 5950Ultra VIVO
2xMaxtor 120GB ATA133 IDE

Seems to be a know problem with the mobo. Linux Hardware has a review:

http://www.linuxhardware.org/article...56&mode=thread

Quote:

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The only problem left unsolved is that the system fails to power down properly. An update to version 1.6 of the BIOS fixed the problem partially. It would sometimes shutdown properly and sometimes not. I’m not sure if others suffer from this problem. If anyone is using the same motherboard and is able to shutdown properly, kindly drop me an email!

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I didnt think it was due to me having an older BIOS as its always updated with liveupdate. Now I can see it is indeed an issue with the BIOS not working well with the ACPI kernel module. This would explain why nearly every Linux distro i've tried with this mobo did the same thing. There doesnt appear to be any fix currently either so it looks like i'm doomed in holding the power button for 4 seconds!! :(

Just thought I would mention that I have now resolved this issue after months of anguish! Bloody Linux!

I resolved it by issuing 'apm=on acpi=off' on the boot command line and edited /etc/modules and added apm power_off=1 and that seems to do the trick.

For some bizzare reason it was loading ACPI and not APM. the power_off=1 option is obviously a workaround but who cares it worked for me!

I am great and I didnt need to flash the BIOS and risk another overbloated paperweight! Cheers Geoffrey!