# halt does not power down computer (related to kde)

## alanBK

I have had this annoyance for the last year or so, and on occasion i have tried looking up its solution, but to no avail.  when i issue the command "shutdown -h now" my desktop computer shuts down cleanly by stopping all the services and such.  It goes through all the steps to the point where it says "power down", then the screen blanks, BUT everything stays on - fans, cpu, hard drive, power source etc.  I then have to manually hold down the power button to power it down completely.  I have acpi support enabled in my kernel, and have acpid installed.  Also, when I boot from the 2005.1 live cd and issue the same command, the computer powers down completely.  Where do I start looking for the difference between the live cd configuration and my desktop configuration?

notes:

using bash 3.1_p17, sysvinit 2.86-r8, baselayout 1.12.9-r2

tried re-emerging sysvinit and baselayout, that didn't workLast edited by alanBK on Sun May 06, 2007 2:54 am; edited 1 time in total

----------

## Pseudonimo

If you search the forums you'll find all kinds of reasons for that to happen. I for instance had that because of alsa. 

If I didn't manually shutdown my usb sound card with alsa before typing shutdown, it would stop in "power down".

(The new alsa fixed this). Try unplugging all external devices before, and look for other reasons in the forum.

----------

## alanBK

hmmm, i still haven't found the solution...I did find a clue to the cause of the problem, however.  It seems to be related to kde.  

If I reboot my computer and use fluxbox as the window manager, I can "shutdown -h now" and the computer powers down completely.  But if I use kde as the window manager, "shutdown -h now" will not power down the computer completely.  Also, if I reboot, use kde as the window manager, end the session, and then begin a new session with fluxbox, "shutdown -h now" no longer powers down the computer completely.  So, for some reason...if I have logged into kde at any point "shutdown -h now" stops working properly.  weird.  

I looked at the top command to view all the running processes for the 2 cases:

1) reboot computer and log directly into fluxbox

2) reboot computer, log into kde, logout kde, log into fluxbox

The top outputs are identical, so no extra process is running that wasn't there before.  Also, the rc-status outputs are identical.

Any ideas?

----------

## alanBK

any ideas?

----------

## hede

If top shows you all your processes you either haven't so much or you have a big screen  :Wink: . try using ps (e.g. "ps aux | less").

If it's a remaining process which interferes shutdown, I would try:

If you are using KDE as a nonroot user, try logging out of KDE and log in to a virtual console (e.g. "[ctrl]-[alt]-[F1]") as root.

Then kill all that users processes ("killall -u [username]"). Then try to shutdown again...

Mostly there are some remaining dbus/hal processes (with gnome I have the problem to not be able to log in a second time because of this).

If that works, try to figure out the interfering process by killing only some / one of those remaining processes.

----------

## Rhiakath

try poweroff instead of shutdown. it worked for me...

----------

## sheep204

 *alanBK wrote:*   

> I have had this annoyance for the last year or so, and on occasion i have tried looking up its solution, but to no avail.  when i issue the command "shutdown -h now" my desktop computer shuts down cleanly by stopping all the services and such.  It goes through all the steps to the point where it says "power down", then the screen blanks, BUT everything stays on - fans, cpu, hard drive, power source etc.  I then have to manually hold down the power button to power it down completely.  I have acpi support enabled in my kernel, and have acpid installed.  Also, when I boot from the 2005.1 live cd and issue the same command, the computer powers down completely.  Where do I start looking for the difference between the live cd configuration and my desktop configuration?
> 
> notes:
> 
> using bash 3.1_p17, sysvinit 2.86-r8, baselayout 1.12.9-r2
> ...

 

I had the same problem,and the command"poweroff" can't shutdown the power automaticlly too.

----------

## energyman76b

are you guys using kamix?

----------

## sheep204

 *energyman76b wrote:*   

> are you guys using kamix?

 

no,I am not using kamix.But I have the kmix in my system .Is it same as what you said?

----------

## energyman76b

 *sheep204 wrote:*   

>  *energyman76b wrote:*   are you guys using kamix? 
> 
> no,I am not using kamix.But I have the kmix in my system .Is it same as what you said?

 

no, kamix and kmix are different apps. I prefer using kamix, but you have to quit it manually or the computer does not shut down, shuts down after a long waiting period, or behaves funny after shut down for some very unknown reasons.

----------

