Shutdown Hanging

[TonyK]

I just installed PCLinuxOS 2012.02 and everything went very well.  I really like the performance of this system.  However, when I try to shutdown or reboot my system it will hang and not shutdown which requires a hard reset.

It starts the shutdown procedure and stops after the following messages.

     INIT:Sending processes the TERM signal                                         [OK]
     Stopping display manager:

And that is as far as it goes.


Does anyone have any ideas on this one.  It seems that the problem lies with the video.

Any help will be appreciated.  I have PCLinuxOS on my laptop and would really like to have it working on my Desktop.  I had Mint on this desktop and it didn't have this problem so I don't know what is different between them that would cause this.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.  Thanks

[menotu]

Hi TonyK - big welcome to the forum, lovely to have you with us.

First thing to ask is are you fully updated?

What video card does your system have and do you know which video driver you are using?

[TonyK]

Hi menotu  Thanks for the reply.
The first thing that I did after installing was to update the packages.

My video card is an NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT.  How do I find out which driver is being used?

[menotu]

I like the NVidia Display Settings which provides useful NVidia info (can be found in KMenu > Applications > More Applications > Configuration

or in a konsole  run the command

nvidia-settings

This will give you driver version and a bit more besides

Can also use the command

rpm -qa | grep nvidia

this may show a few nvidia drivers but the numbers that are "highlighted"  should designate which driver is in use. 

my driver version is 295.40 and shows:

x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-295.40-1pclos2012

[TonyK]

Here is the output from the  rpm command.
rpm -qa | grep nvidia
dkms-nvidia96xx-96.43.20-1pclos2011
x11-driver-video-nvidia96xx-96.43.20-1pclos2011
dkms-nvidia-current-290.10-1pclos2011
x11-driver-video-nvidia173-173.14.30-1pclos2011
dkms-nvidia173-173.14.30-1pclos2011
x11-driver-video-nvidia-current-290.10-1pclos2011

Going through the menu to get to the Nvidia settings shows a driver of 290.10.  I appears that your driver is a later one or is it because you have a different card.

[menotu]

Going through the menu to get to the Nvidia settings shows a driver of 290.10.  I appears that your driver is a later one or is it because you have a different card.

I believe 295.40 is still being tested thus it's in the testing section of the repo.

Quite often when new drivers come out they are first placed in the testing section so any bugs etc can be traced and reported on enabling the devs, if possible, to iron them out.

One thing to note is that apps/drivers etc that are being tested aren't reported on using the forum, it's done via the testing group using pclinuxos-testers@googlegroups.com.

Also of note, the testing group isn't a place to expect fixes, it's more to notify the devs of any issues that have cropped up whilst testing that particular item, which helps them decide on when or if to release as it as part of the "normal" update process.

The 295.40 update was mainly a security fix release thus no major changes to earlier 295.xx releases.

It seems that the problem lies with the video.

If you think updating to 295.40 may cure your issue you would need to add (bearing in mind the above) the word testing in Synaptic.

Synaptic > Repositories > choose ONE repo only and in the section(s) box add the word testing so it reads something like

main updates nonfree games kde4 testing

and do a reload.

As mentioned, select only one repo but not the http://distro.ibiblio.org server as that feeds the mirrors (the exception is having the games repo selected as well)

[TonyK]

I really can't say if the video driver is the problem and do not know enough about the system to try to troubleshoot it.  The point in the shutdown process where it hangs is right after the message " Stopping the display manager:".  It would appear that the graphical user interface is what it is trying to stop.  The exact process that it uses to do this is something of which  I have no knowledge.

Is the nVidia driver a non-free version or one developed by the community for Linux?  Maybe I could revert to an older version of this driver rather than moving my whole system to the testing version which could lead to other problems.  I would imagine however that this would require more knowledge about using PCLinuxOS than I have.  In addition, I would have to tell Synaptic to not upgrade  the driver.

If my memory is correct, there was a shutdown problem when using the live cd.  I will try using the live cd to verify that and maybe burn another older version of PCLinuxOs to see if maybe an older version would work.

At the very least, I am learning more about Linux by trying to solve this problem.

[longtom]

Let me throw in a shot ....

I have the same issue with all distros I have tried as soon as I add a permanent network share (in my case mostly windows) to my fstab.  A shut down can than take up to 6 minutes but will eventually happen.  I have this issue at work with a debian based system as well at home with PCLinuxOS LXDE as well as IceWM.

I have posted in several forums about the issue - a satisfying solution never came up.  Not a train smash whatsoever - when I switch off a PC it is normally for the night - so if it takes 10 minutes it doesn't bother me.

If I have to restart I shut down, wait till all activity stops and hit the button ....

[TonyK]

Let me throw in a shot ....

I have the same issue with all distros I have tried as soon as I add a permanent network share (in my case mostly windows) to my fstab.  A shut down can than take up to 6 minutes but will eventually happen.  I have this issue at work with a debian based system as well at home with PCLinuxOS LXDE as well as IceWM.

I have posted in several forums about the issue - a satisfying solution never came up.  Not a train smash whatsoever - when I switch off a PC it is normally for the night - so if it takes 10 minutes it doesn't bother me.

If I have to restart I shut down, wait till all activity stops and hit the button ....

Thanks for the reply.

I gave this a try and unfortunately after 45 minutes there was no change.  The computer did not shutdown and required that I hit the power button.  I am going to try to see if a later nVidia driver works before I find another distro for this deskktop.  I hate to move to something else because this one has exactly what I want and is working great on my laptop.

[AS]

Let me throw in a shot ....

I have the same issue with all distros I have tried as soon as I add a permanent network share (in my case mostly windows) to my fstab.  A shut down can than take up to 6 minutes but will eventually happen.  I have this issue at work with a debian based system as well at home with PCLinuxOS LXDE as well as IceWM.

I have posted in several forums about the issue - a satisfying solution never came up.  Not a train smash whatsoever - when I switch off a PC it is normally for the night - so if it takes 10 minutes it doesn't bother me.

If I have to restart I shut down, wait till all activity stops and hit the button ....

That's timing probably come from a TCP/IP protocol timeout (i.e. 300 secs, after how much time a connection is considered lost ...). This is a hint that some TCP connection is still "open" at the time of shutdown either because of an not proper umount of the resource or other causes.

AS

[AS]

I really can't say if the video driver is the problem and do not know enough about the system to try to troubleshoot it.  The point in the shutdown process where it hangs is right after the message " Stopping the display manager:".  It would appear that the graphical user interface is what it is trying to stop.  The exact process that it uses to do this is something of which  I have no knowledge.

May I suggest a simple test ?

you can boot your system at runlevel 3, which means you will get up to the text console only (black screen and login prompt),
there you can login and issue a shutdown command immediately, see it it still hangs.

To do so, at grub boot screen, press F3 (Options), select default, add a 3 at the end of the parameters line, press ENTER to boot.

AS

[TonyK]

I was able to do this and the machine responded as expected to the shutdown command.  This was the first time that I was able to get it to shutdown.  What does this indicate may be the problem and can it be fixed?

[AS]

May I suggest a simple test ?

you can boot your system at runlevel 3, which means you will get up to the text console only (black screen and login prompt),
there you can login and issue a shutdown command immediately, see it it still hangs.

To do so, at grub boot screen, press F3 (Options), select default, add a 3 at the end of the parameters line, press ENTER to boot.

AS

I was able to do this and the machine responded as expected to the shutdown command.  This was the first time that I was able to get it to shutdown.

That's a confirmation about your issue is around Xserver/video driver ... exactly which version are you running right now ?
Or, if you know, which are all the version of the same driver you know are not working on your system ?

Additionally, can you post your current grub boot parameters line, as listed in /boot/grub/menu.lst ?

AS

[TonyK]

Here is my menu.lst file at present.

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd1,0)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title windows
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

title linux
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=44b77aae-21c5-4b63-b506-830b3d2b58c2 quiet vmalloc=256M acpi=on splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=UUID=44b77aae-21c5-4b63-b506-830b3d2b58c2 quiet vmalloc=256M acpi=on
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=44b77aae-21c5-4b63-b506-830b3d2b58c2 failsafe vmalloc=256M
initrd (hd1,0)/boot/initrd.img

title memtest-4.20
kernel (hd1,0)/boot/memtest-4.20 BOOT_IMAGE=memtest-4.20

I was running 290.10  but this morning I upgraded to the testing version and I think it may be 295.40.  I did not want to reboot into PCLinux because after using the power button to turn things off so many times the system is beginning to act a little strange.  If I can fix this problem I will reinstall and use the stable version.

[AS]

I was running 290.10  but this morning I upgraded to the testing version and I think it may be 295.40.  I did not want to reboot into PCLinux because after using the power button to turn things off so many times the system is beginning to act a little strange.  If I can fix this problem I will reinstall and use the stable version.

The grub menu.lst look OK.

Sorry, is not clear to me, 290.10 was working correctly ?