# machine doesn't halt, reboots instead

## lxg

When I issue a halt (via shell or GDM), the machine doesn't shut down, instead it reboots. However, init says that it switched to runlevel 0.

This is a fresh setup, nothing fancy, except the fact that this is a BINHOST client from my other machine. (emerge --info available on request, the machine is currently off and on the other floor *lazy*.)

This might sound like a BIOS issue, but when I boot an Ubuntu Live CD, shutting down the machine worked. So I guess it's something with Gentoo.

Is this a known problem? Does anybody have an idea how to fix it?

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## BradN

Just to verify that this is a problem between the kernel and the BIOS, you should compile magic sysrq key support in and then hold alt, hold sysrq, release alt, and press in sequence "e i u o" and see if the "o" actually powers off there or reboots (the letters before it kill all processes and remount all filesystems read-only).  Some keyboards apparently need you to hold alt the whole time.

I'm guessing you've already got acpi support compiled in - normally this is enough to make shutdown work.  

Kernel options you might try (i'm not sure exactly what they all do but I can't rule out that they don't impact shutdown):

acpi=rsdt

acpi_no_auto_ssdt

acpi_os_name="Microsoft Windows"  (this pretends to be windows 98, I don't know the values for other OS's)

acpi_serialize

It could be worthwhile googling for similar problems - these are just possible options I found skimming through the parameter readme file.

If you absolutely don't need any ACPI functions and you're on a one processor system (especially older machines, pre-2000), you could try using APM instead of ACPI, as it provides a different mechanism to power down.

Good luck

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## lxg

Brad, thank you. I'll try to fiddle a bit with the ACPI options tomorrow.

As for APM, the machine is fortunately quite a new one, so APM is not an option.  :Smile: 

Btw, seems I'm not the only one after all: https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-833096.html (Yes, I did search before posting!  :Wink: )

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## svantoviit

Experienced the same problem, even with the 2.6.35 kernel.

On my machine it was ConsoleKit related (look for warnings in /var/log/messages)

Reinstalling and restarting ConsoleKit solved it and shutdown works like expected again.

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