Arch Linux

jc-arch

Member

Registered: 2017-01-17

Posts: 18

[SOLVED] Laptop doesn't power off correctly

Hi there, I know this is a recurring topic over the years, but from what I've read it doesn't use to be a single specific repeatable problem every time, and some of the threads are quite old by now so I'm not sure about their validity. One more thing to consider is my laptop was powering off fine since I installed it until somewhere around a month ago. After that it has the same behavior: once there's a kernel and/or nvidia driver update, the computer does power off correctly the first time, but then after the next boot it just doesn't work correctly; I can see the power off message and my usb mouse light go off. so I assume it just stops somewhere in the process of sending the kill signal to something.

What I'm running:
- Latest Arch Linux Kernel: 4.10.13-1-ARCH
- Graphic card: nVidia GTX 980M with nvidia-378.13-6 from arch repos
- Gnome Shell 3.24-1
- ACPI package installed, acpi_call and acpid are not

What I've tried so far:
- Shutdown from session level 3 (no GUI): gets stuck on reboot: power down message.
- Add sd-shutdown and shutdown hooks to mkinitcpio and rebuild the ramfs: doesn't work.
- Use commands like shutdown 0, shutdown -P 0, poweroff as root user instead of normal user: gets stuck at the same point.
- Tried to power off from both Xorg and Wayland: gets stuck on the same reboot: power down message.
- Install acpid and acpi_call: get stuck on the same place

What's working:
- Both reboot button and reboot command from command line.

Here's the link to the successful power off sequence reported by journalctl: https://pastebin.com/0PFYqPcM
And here's the link to a failed sequence, once again reported by journalctl: https://pastebin.com/TYqNMX1k

From what I can see both are pretty similar: run into the same hooks, both run sd-shutdown and close the same services and umount the same stuff but one ends with 42 lines skipped by rate limiting and one with 40, besides the one failed finishes with "systemd-shutdown[1]: Sending SIGTERM to remaining processes..." and the one successful just finishes journal after the shutting down message.

Am I missing something, any clue where to start? Let me know if you need any additional information to help on the matter, thanks!

Last edited by jc-arch (2017-05-11 04:48:21)

jc-arch

Member

Registered: 2017-01-17

Posts: 18

Re: [SOLVED] Laptop doesn't power off correctly

Well since the problem it's "solved" at some sort and there were no replies I'd like to share what I've found in case someone in the future experiences something similar . After some boots and after installing watchdog I noticed a firmware crash, based on reading for a little longer I noticed the ath10k drivers had some issues in the past, so I tracked it until a problem with the wifi crashing the firmware when attempting for the first time to connect a wireless network. Right after that, uninstalled the linux firmware from the core repos and installed the git version from AUR instead, turned off wifi and turned airplane mode on and connected strictly using wired networks.

After this I still see the firmware crash sometimes, but the computer is both rebooting and powering off correctly both from terminal commands and from the power menu in Gnome. Hopefully a kernel update in the future will finish polishing the problems and this can be useful for someone else in the future.