Shutdown Issues

[Von-Dyke]

Having a couple of issues shutting down, one that was a one off (so far) and one that happens each time:

One-Off: While using 'GShutdown' to turn off the computer while i slept, i awoke to vertical lines on my moniter, the pc still running but unresponsively. Used the reboot button on the tower to restore the system. The vertical lines were white, seemingly random in allocation but all the same size/thickness

Continual: Shutting down the system, on the UBUNTU Shutdown Splash screen (Ubuntu above a bar that decreases from right to left) has yellow, glitchy looking thin vertical lines evenly spaced from the top to the bottom of the screen.

I don't have any video card issues on the system, so is this an installation fault?

[sdimhoff]

Do either of these problems occur if you shutdown manually?

# halt (or sudo halt)

If they do not occur when you just use the command line, then my guess is that you have to look at your Gshutdown as the root of the problem. (i.e. what kind of call is gshutdown sending to your system?)

I don't know if I have any insight into the second, continual problem. As it only occurs when you bring up the shutdown menu (but seems to shut down fine), it could either be a bug in your version or a problem with some part of your x setup. Look through bug reports for possible additional guidance.

[bigtomrodney]

Used the reboot button on the tower to restore the system. The vertical lines were white, seemingly random in allocation but all the same size/thickness

Just as a side note, if you find yourself unable to interact with your PC but don't want to do a hard shutdown there is another solution. A hard shutdown can cause data loss so they're not the best solution - you're asking the BIOS to override the operating system.

In Linux you can ask the kernel to sync all drives and reboot. Hold down the Alt and SysRq keys (usually shared with printscreen) and type the following key sequence

R S E I U B

This puts your keyboard into raw mode, syncs your drives, unmounts all drives, remounts read-only and reboots the system. You can remember it with the mnemonic "Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring"

[sdimhoff]

I've always wondered about why that sequence of keystrokes was so complicated... now I know that they actually stand for something. I also like the pneumonic device, thanks Tom.

[bigtomrodney]

No problem, I love passing that gem on

Here's a better one I found since:

Reboot System Even If Utterly Broken

Also, I found a better description of the keystrokes

The r stands for put keyboard in raw mode
The s for sync the disk
The e for terminate all processes
The i for kill all processes
The u for remount all filesystems read only
The b for reboot the system