Bad Shutdowns

I have a serious concern. I've had a few times where I have tried to either logout or shutdown and my machine goes black (it happened twice yesterday). When this happens, my only choice seems to be to do a hard boot or hard shutdown. My concern is that I won't be able to get back into Linux. I actually had it happen once where there was some sort of a file sector corruption, and I had to whipe out my install with a fresh one. I don't want to have to do that. I've liked Linux so far, but this is scary. I'd like to run Linux exclusively at work, but I am wondering about the reliability issue.

I am running RH 7.1 on a GW G6-400 with 128MB RAM

Anyhow, I've been fortunate since the reinstall. I'd just like to know what could be wrong and causing the bad shutdowns. TIA

well.. one of linux's strongest points is it's stability. unless there's a hardware problem, it's difficult to get linux to truly lock up. what kind of shutdown and logout were you doing?

if you're having trouble logging out of X-windows, then you can always kill the x-server with ctrl-alt-backspace. the only time i've ever had problems logging out of X is while working with development and beta versions. it's unusual but not unheard of for X to lock up.

as for the shutdown problem, i've honestly never heard of linux shutting down improperly. the only vital issue is that the drives need to be unmounted cleanly. even if they aren't it's almost always possible to fix them without doing a re-install. again, if you could give us more information about how you're shutting down, it would help us to find the problem.

How?

A few times from KDE...

Clicked logout.
Clicked yes.
Black screen
15 min later. Still black.

Another time or two from KDE...

Clicked logout
Clicked yes.
KDE Loging Screen.
Selected Shutdown.
Selected Shutdown.
Black screen.
10 min later. Black screen computer still on.

Another time from KDE...

Clicked logout.
Clicked yes.
KDE Login Screen
Selected Shutdown
Selected Restart - Windows.
Black screen.
15 min later. Black screen computer still on.

Every time, used power switch to shut it off. One time that gave corrupted files was under the first listed sequence. Hope that clears up what I've had happen.

How long have you been using linux SierraClassic35?

When I started using it about a year ago, I didn't know for example that if X locks up (it certainly has a few times with me) you can get the text console usually using Ctrl + Alt + f1 and from there try the Ctrl + Alt + Del to force a clean shutdown.

Trouble is, once you force one bad shutdown, it can fan the fire of instability resulting in more bad shutdowns, in my experience.

I used to go by at least two other names on this forum and bad shutdowns have wiped my system (evil installer bug - a documented one) wiped my entire system partitions once!

Now hey, that probably won't happen and it's a lesson in why backups are important.

im also having shutdown problems. i recently installed mandrake 8.0, and when i go to shutdown everything is fine until it tries to unmount the file system, it just sits there so i have to do a manual shutdown. when i restart it has to force a check and everything since it wasnt cleanly unmounted, which i havent had any problems with yet. i usually just leave it on, so its not that big of a deal yet, but if anyone could point me in the direction of what to look at it would be much appriciated. thanks

Ok. It happened again! I was running in KDE all day. Logged out and then back in as root to install WordPerfect and make my final move to Linux. Install was good. Logged out and then back in as my user. All was well. Tried to start WP and got the FontTastic error that I had gotten with Corel PhotoPaint. I had yet to fix it. So, I logged out of user and got the the KDE login screen. The screen looked good, but there was a serious problem. No mouse or keyboard resoponse!!! Had a nice looking login screen that I couldn't do a blasted thing with! Not a single one of the above key sequences would work. So, I shut down with a hard shutdown (what else could I do?). Then restarted Linux. All was well, it loaded, fixed the errors, and logged me into my user. Then I tried to logout to go to root to fix the FontTastic problem. Logout, Logout, black screen, no response in any of the key sequences mentioned above. NOTHING!!! Hard shutdown again (what else could I do?). Tried to restart Linux and got the following

Checking Root File System
/ Contains a file with errors, check forced
Unattached inode 778

/: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; Run fsck Manually
(ie: without -a or -p options)
[FAILED]

Enter root password to perform maintenence


(Repair filesystem) 1 #

I have no clue what to do at the prompt. This is where I previously reinstalled Linux. I am really unimpressed with this problem now. So, blasted ironic that it would happen when I was ready to make the move. Maybe time for a MAC....

I have the same problem as you.

The MIS Dept at the company did the dual boot by themselves. I did a dual boot previously and it was perfect. But now, my new computer is having that same message as yours pop up. That is the one like:

/: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; Run fsck Manually

I'm not quite sure about the Unattached inode part though...

Right now, the MIS are going to wipe everything off and start all over. If they come up with a solution, or if I get a solution before them, I'll be sure to tell you.....

Ok, found this on a site for RH FAQ's. At the repair prompt type:

e2fsck -f /dev/xxxx

where xxxx = your device for your Linux install eg hda5.

It worked as I am typing this from RH with no reinstall.