[hardy] poweroff not shutting down on Dell

[Sven Boden]

I installed (K)ubuntu 8.04 32 bit version on an Inspiron 531 (the bios revision is 1.0.7, the desktop is of end of march 2008).

When I try to shutdown the computer using the red button... or the poweroff command, what I see happening is that the Kubuntu screen with the bar below it appears, the bar goes completely to the right, the harddisks spin down and then nothing. The only way out is to pull the powercord.

This happens as well with the live cd. However it does work properly on a Dell D810 laptop (which is already a couple of years old).

The inspiron 531 is not a Linux supported platform by Dell.

[Sven Boden (svenboden)]

I found the solution for my problem:

Add apm power_off=1 to /etc/modules
Add acpi=off apm=power_off to the kernel options.

And all is ok... This bug can now be closed as far as I'm concerned

[Bernardo Mello (bmello67)]

Thank you Sven, but could you please give more details on how to "Add acpi=off apm=power_off to the kernel options"? I simply have no clue about how to do it.

[Sven Boden (svenboden)]

sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

(or instead of vi your favorite editor). and then add "acpi=off apm=power_off" (without quotes) at the end of the kernel you use to boot. So it should look something as:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-xxxx-generic root=UUID="numbers here" ro quiet splash acpi=off apm=power_off

A very detailed description was posted on the ubuntu forums: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=188244

[Bernardo Mello (bmello67)]

Unfortunately, it didn't work on my laptop Toshiba Satellite u205. Even worse, it starting showing the message "CPU frequency scaling unsupported" and the fan worked continuously.

[Ian Weisser (ian-weisser)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you?

[Sven Boden (svenboden)]

For me the changes I made as in the post of "2008-05-02" fixes the problem on my computer. But other people like Bernardo above might still have it.

[Bernardo Mello (bmello67)]

I am still facing the same problem. Every time I shutdown the laptop I must hold the power bottom until it really goes off.

[Bernardo Mello (bmello67)]

After upgrading to Karmic (9.10), this problem was fixed in my Toshiba Satellite u205. This bug can be closed, as long as I am concerned.