Hello dear Fedora-Community!

Since I installed several Linux-distros onto my Lenovo X230 I had intermittent problems regarding shutdown, suspend and hibernation of my netbook.

Symptoms have been:

• After initiating a system shutdown, Linux effectively terminates but the laptop does not power off. The fans keep running until the battery is exhausted, meanwhile the laptops is completely unresponsive and a hard poweroff (long press of the power button) is required.
• After initiating suspend or hibernation, Linux seems to behave correctly, the screen is turned of, the power button flashes slowly but the wireless LED stays on. The fans keep running and the Laptop becomes unresponsive and cannot be woken up again. A hard poweroff is necessary.
• Sometimes during boot I got the error "Me FW Downgrade - Request MeSpiLock Failed" from the Intel Management Engine and an automatic reboot occured.

The last symptom gave me the hint to the solution: Although the laptop has the latest firmware, the Intel ME seemed to be glitchy and responsible for failed boots and poweroffs.

Even though "Intel AMT control" was set to "disabled" in the BIOS settings the ME was interfering. I learned that this setting just blocks access to the ME configuration but not the ME itself.

So i decided to permanently disable the ME taking the following steps:

1. Reenable AMT in the BIOS settings.
2. During boot press "Strg+P" to enter the "Management Engine BIOS Extension" (MEBx).
   HINT: The default password is "admin" and you will be forced to set a new one. It hast to contain upper case and lower case letters, numbers and a special character or it will be rejected.
3. Set the manageability feature setting in MEBx to "disabled".
4. Reboot back into BIOS an permanently disable AMT.
   CAUTION: This cannot be reversed! Maybe this isn'really necessary but I feel safer this way.

This solved permanently all my poweroff and hibernation issues for two weeks now and besides reduces security risks for your system linked to the Intel ME.

Of course you should take these steps only if your machine is not required to be administrated through the Intel Management Engine. In my case dumping the ME permanently was no problem because I am a single end user using this machine privately and not in a corporate environment.

HINT: If you already have permanently deactivated AMT in the BIOS settings, pressing Strg+P during boot won't work anymore. In this case boot into Linux, execute in a terminal and look for the EFI-entry "ME Configuration Menu". In my case it was labelled "Boot0005". You can then execute (replace 0005 with the correct number for your system) to boot into MEBx on the next reboot and then take the above steps for MEBx.

I hope the little guide is helpfull to some of you.

Best regards,
Volker

Very nice!
I have an x250, but there's no "Intel AMT" in BIOS and Ctrl-P during early boot does not do anything.
I understand x230s can run with coreboot, but I didn't know that just disabling intel ME is so simple.
Good for you.

Hi Ondoho,

even though you have no "Intel AMT" option in your BIOS-settings and Ctrl+P doesn't get you anywhere you should try "sudo efibootmgr" and check if there exists the possibility to boot into the "ME configuration Menu". Disabling the ME there is the crucial step.

Beste regards,
Volker

^ I boot normal MBR/BIOS; efibootmgr says "EFI variables are not supported on this system.", and exits, even with sudo.
But thanks for the tip.
Maybe I'll change the whole system to EFI boot just to check this thing out.

This is the output on my stock X230 with Fedora 32 BETA:

Switching your system boot to EFI might be worth a try.

Thanks for the tips.