Currently in BLFS-7.7 using Xfce if you try to use Reboot & Shutdown from the menu, the system will go into a deadlocked state without a working getty and connected devices like mice and keyboards become unresponsive. This leaves the only recourse to a hard reboot.

The problem seems to stem from xfce-session having a problem sending the correct signals to sysvinit as well as stop the X display service properly. Normal logout seems to work fine.

Does anyone have any knowledge if this problem exists elsewhere and if there are patches to fix the issue if it is an issue?

use xfce all the time and not had this particular problem, but you do need sudo installed and setup for your normal user, are you having the problem as normal user or root user or both?

I have this issue on some of my Fedora 21 xfce systems. It fails sometimes, making me think it is a race condition. I have learned to log out, then shut down on these systems.