When I run "/sbin/shutdown now" as root (or via sudo by a different user), the system begins to shut down, but right after going to "single user" and sending TERM signals, the shutdown process stops, and the last thing written to the screen is:

sh-2.05b#

I have let the box sit at that point for 20 to 30 minutes, and I eventually just have to power it off. When I start back up, I see the warnings that the system was not cleanly shut down, and journals are recovered to get the system started again.

I am running RedHat 8.0, with very little modification. I have no GUI packages installed, this box is a web server only, and I only access from the console.

Using modern journaled file systems (ext3 and reiserFS), is there really any concern these days in just powering the box off? Should I be worried about this error?

Try to disable ACPI and PNP in the computer bios. Use the 'shutdown -h now' command.

Beyond that, you may want to update your bios or look at failing hardware or hardware conflicts.

Does your box lock up? That looks like a prompt to me, like you aren't actually shutting down, but just entering single user mode. Try the -h option for halting the system, and also try the poweroff command, see what that does, could be the shutdown command is screwed for some reason.

Thanks for the help. Using the "-h" switch to halt worked just fine, powered off on its own and everything. Wasn't really familliar with the "halt" command, as I'm kind of a linux noob.

I do think I still have PNP os enabled in the bios also. Saw it when I converted the box to linux, but was too lazy to change it. I'll try that and see if anything else comes up.

Thanks!