Shutdown problem (Dell Optiplex 755)

[juergen_harms]

When I shutdown (or reboot) my Mageia system on a Dell Optiplex 755 Desktop, the system frequently hangs close to the end of the shutdown process, only way out is a power-down of the machine (works perfectly on my Dell laptop).

That looks like a problem well-known from Mandriva times. So far, I did not file a bug, waiting whether other users might report a similar problem: am I the only one?

Some details:

• happens most times, but not always,
• appears to happen less frequently if I do a verbose (ESC button) shutdown,
• I just did a fresh install of Beta2: the freeze already happened at the reboot at the end of the install,
• the problem has been there from the very beginning (alpha 1),
• by "close to the end of the shutdown process" I mean: after a message like "sending all processes the TERM signal", but I have seen the freeze happen after some later message.

A timing / racing problem? (and I did not recently verify whether there exists an update for the BIOS of the Optiplex 755)

[Sfiet_Konstantin]

My Dell refused to shutdown too, but always.
I have reinstalled Mageia bêta 2 and it seems to be ok now.
Dunno why ...

[juergen_harms]

Dunno why ...

From what I have seen, the problem persists with Beta2 - maybe became slightly less frequent. There clearly is a randon effect which might explain that you have not seen it lately.

I will still wait a couple of days for collecting more evidence and then submit a bug to Bugzilla - problem is that Mageia is so stable, I rarely shut my box down

[juergen_harms]

I have done my home-work now, and the problem is solved: My Bios was version A15 - I upgraded to A17 and everything appears to work find - sorry for the noise.

[Sfiet_Konstantin]

From what I have seen, the problem persists with Beta2 - maybe became slightly less frequent. There clearly is a randon effect which might explain that you have not seen it lately.

I will still wait a couple of days for collecting more evidence and then submit a bug to Bugzilla - problem is that Mageia is so stable, I rarely shut my box down

Yeah, it happened again on my Dell.
I will try to flash bios and then, will go to bugzilla ...

[juergen_harms]

Before I upgraded my bios, I did some more playing around - my impression was that a full shutdown practically always worked without freezing, and freezes mainly happened when asking for a re-boot (that is what made me decide to go the BIOS way) - touch wood, and good luck!

[Sfiet_Konstantin]

Before I upgraded my bios, I did some more playing around - my impression was that a full shutdown practically always worked without freezing, and freezes mainly happened when asking for a re-boot (that is what made me decide to go the BIOS way) - touch wood, and good luck!

I have mostly done reboots but when I shutdown, the problem happen quite often. Maybe it is because I'm unlucky ...

I will first try to determine how often the bug happen when I shutdown before upgrading my bios.

EDIT : I've fogotten to mention that my DELL is a Latitude E6400

[Sfiet_Konstantin]

Well, back from some tests :
My DELL don't want to go down, this bug always happen, when rebooting or shutdown.

I'm gonna flash the bios to try ...

EDIT : Strange, suddenly the reboot happened ... I have disabled and uninstalled pulseaudio. Is that pulse the problem ?
I'm gonna try again.

PS : My bios is A26 ...

[juergen_harms]

Another thing to check: is your WLAN enabled when you start shutting down? I have observed that having WLAN active may have strange effects if you go to sleep or to hibernate - maybe also for a normal shutdow?

[Sfiet_Konstantin]

It hands AGAIN :S I do not understand why ...
It hangs at reboot, when I pressed ESC. The time it shutdown normally, I do not pressed it.
And I do not notice anything about wifi ...

[juergen_harms]

PS : My bios is A26

I just verified at the Dell Download support page: the latest BIOS for the Latitude E6400 is A28. I would think it is a waste of time to continue shutting down or re-booting while you do not have an up-to-date BIOS - that may very well be the reason for your problem.

In case you do this the first time:

• go to the Dell Download support page, provide your service tag or go down the pages specifying your machine type, specifying BIOS will offer you the latest version, fetch it - I downloaded my driver with Firefox and not the Dell download utility,
• in XP and Windows7, hitting (or hovering - I do not remember) directly proposes to launch the BIOS installer, Vista probably does something alike - I do not think that Linux has anything that permits to install a new BIOS,
• I think I had to hit OK one or two times, and that is it - nothing scary to do

[Sfiet_Konstantin]

Someone else reported a bug that looks like our problem : bug 1216