I am running Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon. When I do Menu, Quit, Shut Down (or Restart) nothing happens. I have to do that twice in order to shut down or restart. To Suspend I only have to do it once. I have had this problem for many years through many versions of Linux Mint. I have a separate partition for Home and Root. so every time I upgrade the OS I leave Home untouched. Any suggestions would be welcome.

I gather you are issuing the commands from the menu of the desktop environment.

Do you get the same behavior when you issue the commands from the terminal?

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I'm wondering if the GUI shutdown function is issuing a shutdown command but with a timer delay (rather like shutdown without specifying now)?

In addition to trying frankbell's suggestion of shutting down the machine with systemctl poweroff or shutdown now, have you tried issuing a shutdown through the GUI once, but waiting a couple of minutes to see if it eventually initiates the shutdown?

Another option to see if the GUI shutdown function is issuing a timed shutdown is to run journalctl as root, scrolling to the bottom of the output with End and then using the GUI shutdown button and seeing if there's a broadcast message about the system being powered off at a particular time.

I see this happen when I have VirtualBox's management window open (the one you start them from) and the first go shuts that then the second shuts down my machine. Perhaps you have a similar thing open?

Further information:.

Sudo reboot and sudo poweroff both work first time.

Yes, I always have Virtualbox loaded. I closed it and hey presto the problem goes away. Isn't that strange?

Many thanks for all your help. I will also have a look at the suggestions made by Valeoak but I think i will close this thread now.