Fedora 8 Improper Shutdown

dhirajkhanna · #1 14th August 2012, 03:57 PM

Hello,
I have a lean mean version of Fedora 8 installed on a PXI based SBC P-III machine with 256 MB RAM. The problem is that on shutdown, the screen goes blank and there is no indication of when the system shuts down. In fact, I don't think it is shutting down at all. The "lean mean" part is essentially removal of a lot of packages and services. Is there anything particularly required for ensuring a proper shutdown?

***Gareth Jones*** · #2 14th August 2012, 05:15 PM

Moved to EOL.

stoat · #3 14th August 2012, 11:40 PM

Removing a lot of stuff to lighten the system can bust things. It happens all the time when people try that. Something to consider instead is to start out with a bare minimum system and build up. The "Minimum" package selection option went away in Anaconda for a while. I don't remember if Fedora 8 had it or not. If it doesn't have it, then a minimum system still can be installed by choosing "Customize now" on the Package Selection page of Anaconda and deselecting everything in there. The result is usually about two hundred packages being installed, it's over in a couple of minutes, and the system boots to a runlevel 3 command prompt. From there you can establish an Internet connection and install exactly what you need with yum (Fedora 8 has long been archived, so your repo config files will have to be manually adjusted for that). Or, you can set up the InstallMedia repo and install things from the DVD.

But if you want to soldier on with the existing system, maybe it's okay. I mean, if it turns off the hardware and then reboots satisfactorily, maybe you've disabled so many services that there isn't much work to do at shutdown. Fedora 8 was the last version to use plain old SysVinit. If you used chkconfig to disable services, that should be okay. If you manually adjusted the runlevel symlinks, then something could be amiss or out-of-order.

What packages were removed (see /var/log/yum.log)? What services are still enabled (see chkconfig --list)?

dhirajkhanna · #4 16th August 2012, 07:45 AM

I am unable to run acpi daemon. Could that be a problem? If so, can you please provide some help on how to make it run.
Thanks

MauserM98 · #5 16th August 2012, 08:47 AM

As root try

halt -p

dhirajkhanna · #6 16th August 2012, 11:47 AM

halt -p also gives the same result.....a blank screen with no indication of whether the system has halted/shutdown or not.
Any more suggestions?

MauserM98 · #7 16th August 2012, 06:04 PM

It is anyway safe to turn it off after that command. I guess your problem i BIOS related. Check BIOS settings. Or buy a new one. It is anyway an antique you are dealing with....

stevea · #8 16th August 2012, 07:35 PM

I've see this type behavior a couple times in the past, but I don't have any great solution. If it's like what I've seen it's not BIOS related - it's something funked up in the system software.

I suggest you go to a virtual console <ctrl>+<alt>+<f3> and login as root, and try to watch the shutdown from there. You can get back to the gui console with <ctrl>+<alt>+<f1> or similar.

One issue Ive seen is that when a user logs-out from the gui console, some processes remain and these can cause the shutdown to hang. So logout of the gui con and then from the virtual con do a 'ps -aefl' and look for processes that belong to the users.

IIRC back in the FC8 days shutdown sent signals to init and then the iniitab has some entry to actually kick the power. You may want to trace that out.