Can no longer "shutdown" when laptop lid closes

[Gilles Tournier]

1. Ubuntu 11.10 kernel 3.0.0-12-generic #20-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 14:50:42 UTC 2011 i686
2. software-center 5.0.1.5 / power settings menu / gnome-power-manager 3.2.0-0ubuntu1
3.expected to keep this option I had configured in Natty after upgrading to Oneiric
4. after migrating to Oneiric, this feature (closing the lid shuts down the laptop) disappeared. There is no way to set it again inside the power settings menu of the software center, as this option does not appear anymore under the settings for the lid options. Nor is it possible to set it again via gconf-editor: apps-->gnome-power-manager-->buttons and set lid_ac and/or lid_battery to "shutdown" (when changed to "shutdown", it does not change the power manager behavior when the lid closes)-

[Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan)]

Not sure how valid this bug is, since it seems more likely that the 'Shutdown' option was removed very deliberately as a simplification of the gnome-control-center design, but it's definitely not a Nautilus issue so I have moved it from there to g-c-c

[David López (david-lopez-upct)]

Hi Gilles. You can solve this bug (or missfunctionality) of gnome-control-center using dconf-editor instead of gconf-editor. Open dconf-editor and navigate to org -> gnome -> settings-daemon -> plugins -> power. Set 'lid-close-ac-action' and/or 'lid-close-battery action' to 'shutdown'.

You can also solve this problem with Gnome-Tweak, navigate to Gnome-shell and modify 'Laptop lid close action on battery' and/or 'laptop lid close action when on AC'

Wish this helps.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Gilles Tournier (gillestournier)]

Thank you David for your solution. It does work perfectly.
But...I still think this is an issue and not a "simplification". Why would a lambda user be forced to go through dconf-editor (which they probably don't know anything about) in order to have the laptop shutdown when they close the lid because they are finished with their session ? This seem to be a rather normal, intuitive behaviour...
Especially when (as is the case on my laptop since Natty) neither hibernate nor sleep work and crash the kernel when executed...

[David López (david-lopez-upct)]

I agree. I miss a lot of things in this new gnome-control-center. For example, in ubuntu 11.04 (gnome2) we can easily configure laptop lid, power button, screensaver, user groups, automatic login in unity-2d... All those things have gone in ubuntu 11.10 (gnome3), now Gnome-Tweak and Ubuntu-Tweak are essential. Honestly I can't understand the stiffness of gnome3

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

GNOME dropped the ui to configure the lid close behaviour, Ubuntu added back it but listing only suspend, hibernate and nothing ... not sure how useful the shutdown option is in there, you are the first one to request it since Oneiric, it seems it would clutter the ui for something 0.1% of users need, having it available from tweak utility for those who really need it could be enough

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Gilles, we don't design ui to workaround bugs, if suspend doesn't work on your laptop it's a kernel bug and should be fixed rather than workarounded by adding an option in the ui which would not be useful if you laptop worked correctly

[Gilles Tournier (gillestournier)]

I agree.
But my experience tells me that a kernel crash upon sleep or hibernate is a very difficult bug to troubleshoot.
Most of the time, these bugs arise only on a specific hardware or BIOS or ACPI design or other unknown things.
In my case, I really like to have to only close the lid when I'm finished with my session and have the computer shut down.
In fact I don't really need sleep or hibernate, because my laptop boots Oneiric in exactly 5 seconds - an awesome performance !
Waking from sleep or hibernated would take even more time than that...
An other comment I would make is that, in my opinion, the philosophy of open source developpment is all about freedom of choice when it comes to UI and settings - so why restrict options users had previously (and were happy to use) ?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> the philosophy of open source developpment is all about freedom of choice when it comes to UI and settings - so why restrict options users had previously (and were happy to use) ?

it's rather to find a good balance between the number of options,choices and the simplicity of use, I've no strong opinion on the shutdown on lid close out of the fact that it seems an uncommon setting, GNOME3 took as a position that laptop users want to suspend on lid close in 99% of the case, we added the ui back because we think some people just close their lid to walk between locations and don't want to go offline and stop running processes during that time.

[David López (david-lopez-upct)]

I understand you, Sebastien. But in my opinion the key is the word 'previously'. There are lots of things that were easily configurable in 11.04 and now those options are lost. I've given five examples in gnome-control-center: configure laptop lid, power button, screensaver, user groups, automatic login in unity-2d (or gnome-shell).

I'm an 'experienced' user and I can solve those kind of little misfunctionalities, but I'm pretty sure that new users can't solve those kind of problems. And I must think as a new user because I used to be a teacher in a linux course in my university. Last June we choose ubuntu 11.04 in the course, and everybody were surprised how easy, but also how configurable it was. We'll have a new course on next February and I'm not sure what distro/DE will use, because ubuntu 11.10 (moreover gnome3) is a big regression in terms of configurability.

PD: sorry for my bad English, I'm Spanish.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Those are valid points, we dislike some of things GNOME3 did (like dropping support for custom screensaver graphics), some will be added back, GNOME3 and Unity are still quite new, I understand it can be frustrating meanwhile, sorry about that.

Some side notes on the example you took
- you can change the default session simply by picking it in lightdm (you need to log you and log in with the news session), but indeed it might not be obvious for users who configured autologin and usually don't see the login screen.
- user groups configuration is a "known issue", you can only deal with profiles in the new UI, you can look at bug #840682 if you are interested in that issue or https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=658418
- not sure that the power button configurability is something useful, it displays a dialog with the different sessions option, which is something that works for 99% of the users, the extra 1% can still get to the setting with tweak tools

[David López (david-lopez-upct)]

Thanks for the answer, Sebastien. You don't have to sorry, it's a pleassure to speak with you. What I'm trying to tell is that ubuntu and gnome developers don't know who or where those 1% people can be. Maybe I'm the 1% of a lot of removed options, I gave you those examples for a reason.

- There's a computer room in my University with old PC's that don't work fine with Unity, I'm pretty sure that I've tested automatically login in Unity-2D and didn't work, it always started in Unity, so I believe that I have to edit a file to solve this problem. However I've just tested in my own PC and you're right, the automatic login respects the last desktop udes. Maybe I did something wrong when I tested, maybe a recent update changed this. It doesn't matter, the main thing is that it works. Thank you so much for your comment, I have one less problem for the new course :-D

- Thanks for the link of the groups. In the last course I propose an exercise: I have a wife and a child, everyone with their own account, and I want that my wife can read my files but my child not. In 11.04 there was an easy way to solve using User and Groups icon, now I need to use a console. Not a problem for me, but bad for new users.

- For the power button, I use my computer as a DLNA server to watch in my TV movies that I have in my hard disk. When I finish to watch them I used to

(in Ubuntu 11.04)
1-Press power button and go to bed

However now I have to

(in plain ubuntu 11.10)
1- Turn monitor on and wait a few seconds until it responds
2- Enter my password (because screen is locked)
3- Press power button or click on power off upper-right menu
4- Select power off and go to bed

I'm afraid that tweak tools I've used (gconf-editor, Ubuntu Tweak) only allow to remove the confirmation of menu in the upper-right corner, not the power off button, so I can only remove a step

(in ubuntu 11.10 with tweaks)
1- Turn monitor on and wait a few seconds until it responds
2- Enter my password (because screen is locked)
3- Click on power-off and go to bed

I had to apply a different approach to have in ubuntu 11.10 the same behaviour than in 11.04. I wrote in http://askubuntu.com/questions/66723/how-do-i-set-the-power-button-to-shutdown-instantly-instead-of-opening-a-dialog/84984#84984 But this solution is not for a new user.