System does not power off after "halt -p"

bdb4269 · 01-26-2007, 04:46 PM

I am trying to get a linux box to power itself off after "halt -p". It just ends everything and then says "Power Down", and thats it. What am I doing wrong?

teckk · 01-26-2007, 07:00 PM

I think that's a BIOS setting that you need to change. Power off instead of suspend.

bdb4269 · 01-26-2007, 07:24 PM

I've now tried getting into the bios with no luck.

I'v tried F1, F2, F3, F4, F9, F10, F11, F12, ESC, backspace, and delete, and get nothing. (tapping quickly and repetivly, starting immeadiatly after ctrl+alt+del and continuing until it gets to the SCSI RAID BIOS loading.

I feel like an idiot for having to ask this -- but anyone have any ideas how I can get into the bios, if none of this works?

Emerson · 01-26-2007, 07:47 PM

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm
http://bioscentral.com

bdb4269 · 01-26-2007, 08:20 PM

After more fiddling I have figured out that if I press TAB right at the beggining, I get the normal boot screen (instead of the picture boot screen) that tell's me what key to hit to get to BIOS. And it SAYS that the key is DEL. But It does not work, I've tried at least ten times now, I can hit delete like 5-8 times on that very first screen, and it still just immeadiatly goes to the SCSI RAID BIOS loading.

Any ideas?

bdb4269 · 01-26-2007, 08:21 PM

Even more fiddling -- I have discovered that when I do press Del, and it just keeps booting normally -- if I let it keep going, the SCSI controller starts, then halts -- says PANIC -- and thats as far as it can get. So the DEL, is certainly doing somthing, thats keeps the machine from even being able to boot, but its not letting me in the bios.

BTW - its a phoenix award 6.00pg BIOS. I followed the specific intructions here

http://www.answersthatwork.com/Downl...guidelines.pdf

(Only difference being that these intructions say to start from cold boot -- I had just been "ctrl+alt+del"ing)

Still same results

mr.v. · 01-26-2007, 10:28 PM

bdb4269--

1) A few orders of business. What kind of computer do you have? Is it a dell? IBM? HP? you assembled it yourself? etc etc...

2) Two things may be the reason for why you can't get into BIOS. The first is that the SCSI adapter's POST is stealing the keyboard input. So when you press <DEL> it's getting it. Perhaps pressing <DEL> AFTER the SCSI adapter POSTs, you can get into your BIOS. Also possible is *if* you are using a USB keyboard instead of a PS/2 it's possible with an old, poorly programmed BIOS that it doesn't initialize the USB input until after it accepts <DEL> in which case either a BIOS update (if they fixed the issue) would work or a PS/2 keyboard.

3) Your system may not be turning off if you don't have ACPI enabled in the kernel. ACPI handles the events from the power button or OS to turn off.

Run the following commands at the console and post the output of each on the forum:
The first command is:

Code:

ls /proc | grep acpi

The second is:

Code:

ls /proc/acpi/

The third is:

Code:

ps -A | grep acpid

bdb4269 · 01-29-2007, 09:41 PM

It was a server built by Premio. It's not actually mine, it's the small company i work for's server. All I know is that it was built by premio, has dual Xeon processors, i686, scsi raid (2 drives mirrored), and an external scsi tape drive. And they are big honkin server towers. (there are three) They were built within the last 2-3 years. And they were bought for $10K a piece. (which I think was a good bit higher than it should have been) -- it runs RedHat ES3.

As far as pressing delete after -- I have tried pressing delete repetitively (and quickly) all they way until it starts getting to the linux stuff where I know it's already handed things over to the hard drive. And did it multiple times. No luck.

Doesn't look like i am running ACPI. Here is the commands and output (or lack of output for the most part)

Code:

[bbeetle@TCRTSRVL1 ~]# ls /proc | grep acpi
[bbeetle@TCRTSRVL1 ~]# ls /proc/acpi/
ls: /proc/acpi/: No such file or directory
[bbeetle@TCRTSRVL1 ~]# ps -A | grep acpid
[bbeetle@TCRTSRVL1 ~]#

The whole reason Im trying to do this -- is so that if power goes out and UPS sends shutdown signal to servers, as it is -- they shutdown and sit there waiting to be turned off. (and really 15 hours out of the day there is someone there to physically shut them down in that case.) So let me ask this -- when the UPS finally dies, it should actually cut the power pretty cleanly as opposed to letting the voltage get all out of whack, slowing dropping right? I mean, Im just trying to gauge how bad it would be if I just left it as is. In the case the power goes out in the 9 or so hours a day that theres not someone physically there -- the servers with shut them selves down, and sit at the screen until the UPS runs out of power. Do you think its bad enough, that I should put much time and energy into figuring out how to get them to go off all the way?

mr.v. · 01-29-2007, 11:32 PM

The only real trouble with a sudden power failure (not spike but failure) was before the journaled file systems (like ext3) your filesystem could get corrupted without being properly unmounted. So in your case...everything's unmounted, the kernel has halted, and the system is for all intents and purposes, is dead...it just simply hasn't "shutoff", then it'll be fine if the power goes off.

All ACPI does is save you from having to push the button to turn it off. It could be that ACPI is disabled in the BIOS or isn't compiled into the kernel. You may be able to find out if it was enabled in the kernel if there's "/proc/config.gz" support in the kernel where the kernel config is placed. You can copy that file, ungzip it, and look for the ACPI lines to see if it was included or excluded.

Other than that, if it's just for the rare event that the power fails, and your kernel's already halted. I don't think there's any "damage" that you have to worry about occurring.

bdb4269 · 01-30-2007, 03:21 PM

Sweet - thnx for the info!