Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

[archimedes1981]

Hi,
I have migrated from Mandriva 32-bit to Kubuntu 64-bit lately. My choice for Mandriva was that it was the only distribution which worked fine when I used the following at boot:

acpi=off apm=power-off noapic nolapic

But Mandriva 64-bit is not free...so.

Problem with Kubuntu is that without any commands at boot, it freezes while using (not more than 30mins tops. If I do the boot commands it freezes at shutdown and I have to tap the on/off button for it to shutdown. I heard that it might be a video problem. My card is ATI Radeon 9600 XT . It's not much of a big deal but I get the impression that it's not powering down correctly.

Can I try something else? I didn't quite get what the acpi and apm commands mean and why they don't work well with my pc. This seems to be an unpopular problem.

Any ideas or clarifications appreciated.

[sithlord48]

Re: Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

look in your bios to see if you can disable ACPI. thats prolly the easiest way to insure that you won't be using it.

hows about some more info on your hardware. im sure it will help us help you.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

look in your bios to see if you can disable ACPI

Ever since joining the Linux community about a year ago, I see this recommendation with some regularity. I'm having trouble understanding why disabling ACPI is a good idea -- doesn't this result in the loss of a number of important power management and device configuration functions?

[sithlord48]

Re: Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

depends on the hardware type mostly does nothing on desktops and even less if you are forced to disable it in order to boot the os. you would just be removing the need for these boot options. iirc your video card should be ok with the new "radeon" driver.this might not solve your issue but it should not hurt.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

IMO the advice to disable all the ACPI APM stuff usually applies when the person with the issue doesn't yet have the skill set to determine the exact nature of the problem or the problem is severe enough that the computer won't boot.

Often, once you can boot the system a kernel update or other grub boot line entry will fix the issue. As sithlord said, for desktops there's not much you're missing out on except maybe temp readouts.

For example, I had an issue with a computer that would over temp about 2 minutes after booting. It became obvious right away that it wasn't actually over heating, but the kernel insisted it was so would shut down the computer. I eventually found a couple of kernel settings that would ignore the temp readout, then I updated my BIOS and the problem went away.

There are many other kernel boot entries that may fix an acpi problem...

Debugging ACPI

[oshunluvr]

Re: Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

To archimedes:

If you're serious about solving this particular problem, you need to start by reading and doing this:

Must Read

There is absolutely no way anyone can offer any help without any information.

BTW, most computers these days require some ACPI/APM functionality to turn off. If you're going to disable these functions entirely, you might look into your BIOS and see if there's a "Legecy" setting for APM. Also - first step for those having ACPI/APM problems is look into updating your BIOS.

[jglen490]

Re: Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

acpi and old hardware can sometimes be a tough nut to crack. As time went by with my old hardware, acpi was less inclined to load, based on the age of the BIOS on my machine. In fact, mine is old and has all available BIOS updates provided by IBM. As a result, I was having some problems with all sorts of power settings such a shutdown, entering into sleep, and others.

For a while, I was able to load apm via the /etc/modules file and with the power_off=1 parameter I was able to actually get to a powered off state upon shutdown. Now, that doesn't even work. So I removed the modules call to apm, and went with acpi=force as a boot parameter. I now can power off on shutdown, but my system refuses to sleep - under any condition. Screen saver usage helps keep the screen pretty clean and I don't have to worry about anything like burn-in, but still it would be nice .....

So, my compromise is being able to at least power off on shutdown and not having to hang around and manually hitting the power button. Life is hard, at least with old hardware that otherwise works quite well for my needs.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Freezing. Shutdown issue. ACPI, APM Video problem??

http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/acpi/debug.php