I have recently recompiled my kernel using 2.6.16 source. All seems to be work fine with shutdown and power-off.

However, since migrating from 2.6.14.6 to 2.6.16 I notice in the terminal output when I am shutting down that an entry something like 'AMPD[xxx]' is reached and it hangs there a couple of seconds before continuing to shutdown.

I know this is the APM daemon, but why is it doing this now with the new kernel?.

Should I really need APMD running if I have ACPI compiled in?

How can I stop APDM to test what happens?.

Any advice on the above would be appreciated.

Thank you.

First you'll need ACPI support in kernel or in its (loaded) modules and acpid package installed.
Stopping apm daemon is as easy as launching killall apmd.
Now you may start acpi daemon. Make sure init script is executable chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.apcid and now you may run /etc/rc.d/rc.apcid start.
If all went allright (apcid is in process list, no error/warning messages in syslog) you may perform shutdown now.
If it'll satisfy your expectations you may safely remove package apmd and use acpid solely.

dunric:

Thank you for your reply.

I have a few comments and questions before I try what you suggested:

1.) I already have the necessary ACPI support in the kernel and the acpid package installed.

2.) If I issue 'kill apmd' how what do I need to do to make sure it does not start up at the next reboot?

3.) If I issue /etc/rc.d/rc.apcid start and all works fine, what do I do to make sure this happens with each reboot.

Thank you for your help.

ad 2) Apmd is started from rc.M init script. You either have to removepkg apmd (better way) or edit rc.M (a bit dirtier) . Btw. the command is killall.

ad 3) To start acpid automaticaly after a boot, you have to make rc.acpid executable (as I already descibed) and do step described in the previous point (ie. remove apmd package).

Ok, I've done all this and ACPID loads satisfactorily.

I am still trying to decide now the best way to make ACPID load at boot in preference to APMD. Looking at the rc.M script, I can see why APMD is loaded in preference, but I would like to know why this was not happening with my previous kernel 2.6.14.6 which had exactly the same APM/ACPI modules configured.

Anyone know why this behavior changed?.

To get ACPID to load in preference to APMD, I could obviously uninstall APMD, but would prefer not to do so at this stage. Is there a way of doing this without editing rc.M?.

Thank you for your continuing help.

OK, I have tried a few things.

What seems to work is to pass this command at the Lilo prompt
Then the rc.M script will bypass loading APMD as it does not find APM running in the kernel and so start ACPID.

I now propose to make this permanent by entering this in lilo.conf.
Would someone please confirm to me that this is a good way of achieving my goal and that it will not cause any system problems.

Thank you.

It should work fine as long as no hardware in your system requires APM (Which seems to be the case since it works fine with the 'apm=off' at lilo bootprompt.

It's an elegant, simple solution. Well done.

Well yes, it all seems to work, but now you have got me a little concerned when you suggest that other hardware may require APM.

My PCs are desktops and as far as I know I only require ACPI to let me configure power management to put the monitor into standby and also to 'power -off' the PCs at shutdown.

Are there any other issues I should be concerned about with "other hardware" requiring specifically APM?.

Thank you for your continuing help.

I have found the clue as to why APM is active in my 2.6.16 kernel and not active in 2.6.14.6.

The /var/log/messages file shows this line with 2.6.14.6:
It does NOT appear in the log from 2.6.16.

I like to find out reasons for things happening. I found no mention of this change in the kernel changelogs.