System shuts down during GNOME startup

[Jelle Raaijmakers]

I'm running Ubuntu Dapper on my laptop and after updating it seems that at the end of the GNOME startup procedure my system shuts down immediately. So I just see my desktop, panel and icons for about a second when my screen goes blank and I'm told that shutdown has been initialized.

Also, I have found these workarounds which might be of interest to you:
-) Set acpi=off as a kernel parameter to disable ACPI
-) Before logging in, press CTRL+F1 to go to a text console and then CTRL+F7 to go back to the login screen

When ACPI is enabled I can see that my battery isn't detected. So I suspected that gnome-power-manager assumed the battery level is 0% and shuts down. But that wouldn't make any sense regarding the second workaround. Any thoughts?

[Daniel Silverstone (dsilvers)]

Can you please confirm the version of acpid and gnome-power-manager you are running? Also, can you check to see if you get a power button event during bootup which could be causing the shutdown?

There was a bug where gnome-power-manager invoked the critical battery operation even when on AC power, but this was supposed to have been fixed recently. Can you try with and without the power adaptor plugged in and let me know the matrix of behaviours?

Thanks,

D.

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

As of today everything is working perfectly. I have not been able to reproduce the problem again, which disables me from testing different situations - but that won't be necessary anymore.

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

No wait, I made a mistake.

Last night I edited ~/.gconf/%gconf-tree.xml and set the critical power treshold to 0 (zero). This enabled me to boot without any problem. I will try your suggestion of checking the power button event.

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

After reverting the changes done to %gconf-tree.xml I modified /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh to touch a file when called. The file was never created, with or without the power adaptor plugged in.

[Daniel Silverstone (dsilvers)]

So with no change to the gconf tree (I.E. critical power threshold set at a default of some kind) things still work now?

It sounds like it was reacting to a critical power level and shutting down even though it was on AC

If you can't reproduce the behaviour any more then I think this bug can be closed

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

No, I didn't make myself quite clear.

I modified the default gconf tree to set threshold_critical to 0 (zero) in gnome-power-manager. This way, the condition battery_level < threshold_critical would never be reached.

But without this modification, Ubuntu shuts itself down during GNOME startup. Appearantly this is not done by /etc/acpi/powerbtn.sh as modifications to this file made no difference.

[Daniel Silverstone (dsilvers)]

Does your system believe its AC adaptor is present and online?

I.E. if you set the critical level to zero and then wave your mouse at the g-p-m icon, what does the icon look like and what is the tooltip?

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

The icons behaviour is somewhat erratic.

-) When plugged in, the tooltip sais that I'm running on AC power.
-) When plugged out, the tooltip sais that I'm running on battery power although the icon shows a plug instead of a battery. The tooltip doesn't report any kind of battery level or time indication.
-) When plugged in again, it shows a 'charging icon' and the tooltip reports battery level and ETA to a fully charged battery.

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

This was in my kern.log:

Feb 15 18:31:38 localhost kernel: [4294692.718000] ACPI: AC Adapter [ACAD] (off-line)
Feb 15 18:31:38 localhost kernel: [4294692.720000] ACPI: Battery Slot [BAT1] (battery absent)

Does this indicate the kernel ACPI controller doesn't know that I have either a battery or an AC adapter?

[Daniel Silverstone (dsilvers)]

And the shutdown-on-gnome-start occurs when plugged in, as well as when running from battery?

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

Occasionally Ubuntu would start like normal, but most of the time it doesn't matter whether I boot from battery or AC power: shutdown is called. During boot I noticed anacron deferring because of my laptop running on battery power, which is correct.

Also, I noticed that although my laptop is now running on AC power, the g-p-m icon's tooltip sais 'running on battery power'.

[Daniel Silverstone (dsilvers)]

Right, this suggests that the ac adaptor isn't being detected properly at all.

I would suggest that for now, you need to look at making the kernel behave properly. So it is a bug in the kernel's acpi drivers for your laptop

You can either convert this bug or file a new one. Your choice.

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

Where exactly would I file a new bugreport? Package 'acpi', 'acpi-support', 'acpid' or 'linux-source-2.6.15'?

[Daniel Silverstone (dsilvers)]

I'd start with linux-source-2.6.15

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

Filed bug #31547.

[Daniel Silverstone (dsilvers)]

We'll leave this here until we know what the kernel team say

[Riccardo Setti (giskard)]

Jera,

Do you still have this bug?

[Jelle Raaijmakers (jelle-gmta)]

ATM my battery and A/C-status is detected somewhat better which prevents this bug from happening.

[Simon Law (sfllaw)]

It appears that this problem has been resolved for this user.