shutdown now command does not work

[ill]

using the command sudo shutdown now will cause the system to try to shutdown, but then it switches to single user mode instead, while selecting shutdown from a gui option will cause the system to actually shutdown.
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ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120423)
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: upstart 1.5-0ubuntu9
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
Tags: quantal
Uname: Linux 3.6.1-030601-generic x86_64
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-21 (12 days ago)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

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[Book 'em Dano (heymrdjd)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please execute the following command, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:

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[ill (illumilore)]

apport information

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

This is correct behaviour - "shutdown now" is supposed to switch to single-user mode unless an explicit option has been set to specify an alternative form of shutdown. What you probably meant to type was "shutdown -h now" which will halt the system (and generally power it off too).

The man page for shutdown does need updating to show the default action of "switch to runlevel 1" though.

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

shutdown man page updated upstream to clarify behaviour.

[Dimitri Pappas (fragtion)]

'shutdown now' would typically shut the system down until recent updates which also caused reboot now to enter single user mode. why would 'reboot' ever bring the system to single-user mode, even if the user provides incorrect syntax? Incredibly unintuitive, not to mention inconsistent. This is still a bug as far as I'm concerned, as is bug#1174272 - but rather than arguing the point any further, I'm content to much rather grab some popcorn and wait for others to amplify the seriousness of it and hopefuly persuade a clearly stubborn developer

[Dimitri John Ledkov (xnox)]

revno: 1475
committer: James Hunt <email address hidden>
branch nick: upstart
timestamp: Tue 2013-05-07 09:59:05 +0100
message:
  * util/man/shutdown.8: Specify default action is to bring system
    down to single-user mode (LP: #1065851).