Arch Linux

thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

~/.Xauthority replaced--shutdown now works?

I was experiencing unwanted reboots after issuing various forms of the shutdown command.  It wasn't every time, but the unwanted reboots were occurring more often than not.

While tracking down an error message from /usr/bin/startx, I stumbled on a possible solution, and I am wondering why it works: I replaced ~/.Xauthority.

• I always log in, start X, and power off the PC from a linux console.  I never use a log-in manager.

• I ruled out a BIOS misconfiguration

• I tried with and without ACPI and acpid with no change: random reboots still occurred

• X is always started with "ck-launch-session openbox-session" in ~/.xinitrc.  There is no "dbus-launch" used when starting X.

Upon a whim, I decided to try starting X using "startx" rather than "xinit".  "startx" complained of a non-existent command, the command being a long string of hex-digits.  After exploring the "startx" script, I decided to try replacing ~/.Xauthority with an empty file:

$ mv ~/.Xauthority ~/.Xauthority.backup
$ touch ~/.Xauthority

I do note that my old ~/.Xauthority had a creation date of 2011-04-16, the same date I upgraded the "xorg-server" package.

I've now gone through at least fifteen power up and power down cycles without one unwanted reboot, even after lengthy X sessions.  I have regenerated ~/.Xauthority by using "startx," with no ill-effects.

I'm at a loss to explain how this solves the shutdown-reboot problem.  Any ideas?

Last edited by thisoldman (2011-04-30 13:40:14)