Suse 10.1 will not shutdown or logoff

[stuntman]

Hi, I am an experienced Windows user and have thrown it out for Suse Linux.

I am not able to properly shutdown or logoff or restart. When I select try to do so through the Gnome GUI the sytem immediately goes to a black screen with a cursor at the top left (it has actually shutdown properly once and I dont know why)

- I have an Asrock 775i65GV (865GV chipset), d805 dual core, 2GB Ram, 80GB IDE drive.

- I have tried both ACPI and non-ACPI installs

- I have updated the BIOS, and attempted disabling all ACPI items

- booting to "failsafe" mode fails

- one of up the updates on install asked me to run "'/sbin/lilo" before rebooting but a kernal update rebooted my machine automatically and when I tried to run it later I got: "Fatal: Cannot open: /etc/lilo.conf"

most of Linux is foreign to me, I have been poking around the Yast console but have been unsuccessful. Can anyone tell me what I should do next?

Stuntman

[stuntman]

One other detail I forgot. I am unable to even logoff without hanging the computer.

Also, what are the consequences of continually turning off the PC in this state of brokeness?

Stuntman

[stuntman]

The Suse Live DVD will perform a shutdown sequence (it reboots instead of shutting down but at least it does the sequence).

So what is the difference between the live DVD and the HD installI did?
Since the Live DVD works pretty good, I am certain there is a solution or that someone can at least provide some help.

thanks,

Stuntman

[eraker]

I am not able to properly shutdown or logoff or restart. When I select try to do so through the Gnome GUI the sytem immediately goes to a black screen with a cursor at the top left (it has actually shutdown properly once and I dont know why)

- one of up the updates on install asked me to run "'/sbin/lilo" before rebooting but a kernal update rebooted my machine automatically and when I tried to run it later I got: "Fatal: Cannot open: /etc/lilo.conf"

If a SuSE update updated the kernel and installed a new kernel version, then it probably would have asked you to run /sbin/lilo to make sure that the bootloader "lilo" knows the new kernel is there. This is only necessary if you actually use lilo as a bootloader. Since you to appear to have a default SuSE install (and you're not aware of what lilo is) then you mostly likely have grub installed as a bootloader, and so that instruction about running lilo doesn't apply to you and you can safely ignore it.

As for the shutdown problem, I'm not sure I can help you, but the first thing I would try is shutting down X from the command line on one of the virtual terminals. See if you can stop X properly without errors, and then immediately try to shutdown or restart the computer:

First, hit CTRL+ALT+F1, then login as root and do:

# /etc/init.d/xdm stop

OR

# /etc/init.d/gdm stop

THEN:

# shutdown -r now (for reboot)

OR

# shutdown -h now (for total shutdown)

It should give you a list of stuff it's trying to do when shutting down. For instance, it should say "Sending all processes the KILL signal," since this is virtually what shutting down is. The commands that the shutdown sequence enters will tell you whether or not they succeed or fail, and if it does hang, you might get a sense of which command it's hanging on. Anyway, if that command works, then it's probably a gnome problem.

[stuntman]

Thanks Eraker,

I switched to the KDE GUI (I like it!) and still got the same issues but learned a bit.

After halting a bunch of services I still got the shutdown issue but after restarting them the PC now seems to shutdown from the GUI (well actually it just reboots).

The terminal mode shutdown halts while stopping this process or that process. It does not seem consistant. I am going to check my hardware out (eventhough everything else seems good). I am suspecting either a hardware issue or a driver issue at this point. The memory seems fine.

Anyone know how to do a full diagnostic?

Stuntman