[SOLVED] Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

[KaFive]

Hi, I've installed Kubuntu 10.10 in a new Compaq laptop alongside Windows 7. It was all OK until I decided to shutdown the system. No matter what method I use to shut it down (gui or console commands) it just hangs or crashes after showing the splash screen and the system messages. I also noticed that when I click the shutdown button from the kickoff menu it doesn't show the confirmation dialog. I have to do a hard shutdown every time I want to turn off the laptop and I think that is not really good for it. I'm sure this crash is not caused by ATI drivers because I have none installed, even a fresh install or a live kubuntu cd usb hangs/crashes the same way.

Is there any fix for this?
Hope someone can help me, I really want to use Kubuntu on my laptop, thanks a lot!

[The Liquidator]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

Hi and welcome!

Can you tell me whether you have updated your system? If not, I recommend you do so as that may well fix the problem.

[KaFive]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

No I haven't, I'll try to update it now..

[The Liquidator]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

Okay

If you are familiar with the concept of ppas you will find also that upgrading to kde 4.5.5 will also help as loads of bugs have been removed from it.

For info see here

http://www.kubuntu.org/kde-sc-4.5.5

You are currently I think running kde 4.5.1 so this will update it quite a bit. If you do this, after installing but before rebooting I suggest you paste the following command into a terminal

sudo apt-get install plasma-desktop

Due to structural differences between the various kde versions the package can get left behind potentially giving you a black screen on reboot.

I'm not at a linux box right now so the terminology may be off. For the confirmation dialog, launch system settings and select the startup /shutdown option. That gives you the option to show the dialog box which I don't think is enabled by default.

[KaFive]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

Well I updated the system and did sudo apt-get install plasma-desktop, but it says "you have the latest version" or something like that. The shutdown problem stays the same...

[The Liquidator]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

Load a terminal and type

sudo halt

Do you get any error messages?

[KaFive]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

Nope, the system starts to shutdown but it doesn't and I get the blank screen again.

[KaFive]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

Now I've switched to Kubuntu 10.04 and it seems that the shutdown hang dissapeared, but now I don't have internet..

EDIT: Shutdown and internet problems fixed

Anyway, thanks for your help The Liquidator!

[GreyGeek]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

.....
EDIT: Shutdown and internet problems fixed
....

WAIT!!!! Don't drop the thread without tell us how you fixed the problem. Your answer may be of help to someone else in the future.

There is an app called "kshutdown" in the repository. It does what the power off plasmoids do, but its a program, not a plasmoid. (At least that's my understanding of it, but I may be wrong.)

My approach to solving your hang problem would be to eliminate the possible causes, one at a time. First, I'd open a konsole and issue "sudo service kdm stop". That would kill the GUI desktop and leave me in a Konsole. Then, I'd issue "sudo halt" and watch the messages. If it didn't hang then the problem is related to shutting down the video and this would require examining the video driver and/or settings. If it did hang then after power cycled the box and got the desktop back I'd example the system logs and see what the msgs were, and then act on them.

[KaFive]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

Sorry for that. I solved the problem by simply switching to Kubuntu 10.04. It's not the best solution but it works for me, no more shutdown problems so far. So I'll try your solution with a Kubuntu 10.10 live usb.
Thanks for your answer!

EDIT: What if I install KDE 4.6? Could this solve the problem?

[GreyGeek]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

K10.4 is an excellent solution, and will continue to be so for another 27 months. By then the next LTS will be available. K10.4 is my primary OS.

KDE 4.6 was released TODAY for the Natty Narwhale, but only through the backports:
ppa:kubuntu-ppa/backports

Natty, of course, won't go gold until April, so you will be a beta tester till then. However, I am running Natty as a guest OS and it is doing very well. I think I will upgrade KDE to 4.6 in it just to see how 4.6 is.

[KaFive]

Re: Shutdown hangs and shows blank screen

I tried Natty Narwhale and the problem persists. Anyway I'll mark this thread as solved.

Thanks all of you!