[SOLVED] Can't Shutdown or Restart

[Healena]

Hi all, sorry to be a pain, I have googled and searched these forums, and everything I have done has either not worked, or as is the case now, completely prevented me even reaching the desktop.

I installed Linux Mint 18.3 64bit to an old Dell Laptop (Inspiron 1501) after testing it on the live usb stick I had made (which I might add, had no issues shutting down). I already knew it didn't pick up the wireless, but prior to installation had googled it and discovered I needed to install the b43 firmware or something from synaptic, which after I had installed Mint to the HD I duly did and wifi working after a restart (which of course had me holding down the button, since it wouldn't restart, the Mint logo appeared, dots flashed, screen flashed and went black, then the logo and dots re-appeared but no movement. A minute later of zero activity and I forcibly shut it down).

I found several threads about this issue, the first had some code: for e in kate gedit pluma;do if test -e /usr/bin/$e;then $e /etc/fstab;fi;done

Which did absolutely NOTHING. I went to the menu and located the text editor, which hitting "about" I discovered was called xed. With this I was able to modify grub, first with: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="apm=power_off"

This did nothing at all, same issue on restart and shutdown, so next was to add:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="acpi=noirq"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="acpi=force"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="apm=power_off"

This took away the splash screen and gave me rows of text of everything doing it's thing, then the login screen popped up, logged in, black screen with cursor as usual, only after all the hdd activity finished, no desktop, still that way 5 minutes later, zip.

So now it's not usable at all. Before I find myself a different distro, I thought I'd ask here. I have done all the updates for it too (thinking newer kernels may fix it etc) to no avail. I'm assuming I can access the grub file from the live usb and get the desktop back, but it's incredibly frustrating not being able to restart or shutdown. A simple press of the power button does not complete the shutdown either, and as previously stated, it shutdown just fine from the live USB. I also looked at the drivers, since another thread mentioned something about an nvidia driver (don't think this has nvidia) the only proprietary driver in use was the B43. There was an AMD minicode firmware thing, but I didn't touch it.


TL;DR - Mint 18.3 64bit won't shutdown or restart on an old Dell Inspiron 1501. I googled a bunch and searched this forum, tried some stuffs, none of it worked. Am salty.


Thanks in advance for your help LOVE YOU!!!

[AZgl1800]

My only comment is that on my ASUS TP500L laptop, it takes a lot more than one minute for some shutdown operations, or to start up for that matter.

Might you be too hasty to hit the Power Button?

I would give it a long try, I just walk away, do something else, walk the dog.....

and then see if it finally does something right.

[Healena]

Ok, further to what I wrote, it turns out that I was mistaken, the live USB does not restart or reboot the laptop either (the other 2 distros I looked at did so just fine, also both based off of ubuntu/debian).

I used the live USB to restore the grub, wasn't particularly complex, except mounting sda5 turned out to be "swap" and a look at gparted showed me that I needed sda1.

I found another guide that was very similar, slightly different, it had me modify just the one line: GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" acpi=force apm=power_off

and then had me modify modules and add: apm power_off=1

Again, no joy.

I did notice something of interest at the start of the live usb (shows in on LXDE live USB too, but this is still able to shutdown and restart) and seems related (to Mint at least):

[0.048000] ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
[0.257880] ACPI Error: Needed type [Reference], found [Device] ffff935fb30a9ac8 (20160930/exresop-103)
[0.257939] ACPI Exception: AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE, While resolving operands for [OpcodeName unavailable] (20160930/sdwexec-461_
[0.257993] ACPI Error: Method parse/execution failed [\SB.PCI0._OSC] (Node ffff935fb38b6fa0), AE_AML_OPERAND_TYPE (20160938/psparse-543)

Intriguing stuffs. <3


@ AZgl1500 I thought of that too. 35 minutes of stuffs later, it was still exactly where I left it. It's definitely not gonna do it by itself

[thx-1138]

Healena, gksudo xed /etc/default/grub, try changing to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="noapic nolapic", save,
then sudo update-grub, see if that makes a difference...
I would strongly suggest if possible to try to find an update for the BIOS of this machine over at Dell's site...

[0.048000] ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC

On the live boot, run inxi -Fxz, this will give you the basic system information (including BIOS revision currently in use). Post it's output here as well...

Check also in Control Center - Driver Manager what graphic drivers are currently in use (if others are available, try switching over to them etc)...

PS: Try avoid holding down the power button to 'force' it to shutdown faster, as this might have undesirable side-effects (data corruption), use REISUO instead for a 'gentle' shutdown.

[AZgl1800]

He meant to say:

ALT-Sysreq REISUB

instead of REISUO



typo, he knew what he meant to say

[Healena]

Thanks guys, I already looked for drivers, as I specified only the wifi driver was listed in use (which I had to install in the first place in order to get wifi working on Mint).

@thx-1138 I have just made the modification to grub that you suggested and the problem is solved, performs restarts and shutdowns near instantly, THANK YOU SO MUCH! Therefore, @AZgl1500, doesn't look like I'll be needing REISUB.

As for updating the BIOS I considered that, but it's a 10 year old machine, and since the problem only happened in Mint, was going to be a last resort, if even it was possible to find a BIOS for such an old beast. It was going to be consigned to the trash, the owner having bought a new one, when I pointed out that whilst Vista may have had its day, the laptop could be repurposed as a linux machine should anything ever happen to the new one, allowing her to still do her emails etc whilst she repairs or replaces the other one.

I'd never tried Mint, it was a matter of curiosity, but its user friendliness made it top contender for which distro to use given the owner's level of expertise (zero).

[Healena]

@thx-1138

Sorry forgot to add the output you asked for (though seems irrelevant given your suggestion's success).

mint@mint ~ $ inxi -Fxz
System: Host: mint Kernel: 4.10.0-38-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.6.6 (Gtk 3.18.9-1ubuntu3.3)
Distro: Linux Mint 18.3 Sylvia
Machine: System: Dell product: Inspiron 1501
Mobo: Dell model: 0UW744 Bios: Dell v: 2.1.0 date: 12/18/2006
CPU: Dual core AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-50 (-MCP-) cache: 512 KB
flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 svm) bmips: 3192
clock speeds: max: 1600 MHz 1: 800 MHz 2: 800 MHz
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS482M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200]
bus-ID: 01:05.0
Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
Resolution: 1280x800@60.96hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RS480
GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 17.0.7 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio: Card Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA)
driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:14.2
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.0-38-generic
Network: Card-1: Broadcom BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
driver: b43-pci-bridge bus-ID: 05:00.0
IF: N/A state: N/A mac: N/A
Card-2: Broadcom BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX
driver: b44 v: 2.0 bus-ID: 08:00.0
IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 95.8GB (4.1% used)
ID-1: /dev/sda model: SAMSUNG_HM080HI size: 80.0GB temp: 37C
ID-2: USB /dev/sdb model: DataTraveler_3.0 size: 15.7GB temp: 0C
Partition: ID-1: swap-1 size: 2.01GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda5
RAID: No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 55.0C mobo: N/A
Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info: Processes: 178 Uptime: 3 min Memory: 513.2/1870.9MB
Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.2.35
mint@mint ~ $

Off-topic.... sure is one chilly USB stick no?


Just in case anyone with the same laptop has this issue and wants to try the BIOS update, to my surprise, it was last updated for this model in November 2011 (version 2.6.3) although it shows the release date was December 2007 (much more what I would expect). Problem is, it's a windows exe, and I nuked Vista for this. Since it all works as it should now, "Don't fix it if it ain't broke" right?

Thanks again for the help, SOLVED

[Healena]

Spoke too soon, there's seems to be something of a caveat. Performance is WAY slower, I notice it when using the scrollbar on firefox, and especially full screen youtube, previously 720p video ran smoothly, now not even 360p is as smooth.

Is this a normal result of what you had me do? If it is, it's simply not an acceptable solution and I'll have to (sadly) change to a different distro.

[thx-1138]

Healena: reason i asked for inxi -Fxz was to have an idea of the machine's capabilities & peripherals, so that i can make some more educated guesses on what & how/why it happens.

Your BIOS revision is from December 2006, and the last revision available one from Dell from December 2007, as you already found above. It might fix a few errors that were reported above, you never know - but i wouldn't really expected miracles...
You could also try testing by using only noapic or nolapic to see if the shutdown/restart behavior gets corrected. I simply went with a more "aggressive behavior" as a starter...

Last but certainly not least, based on the specs above, i'd certainly go with Mint XFCE instead of the Cinnamon variant, it's more lightweight & by far more suitable for it. Cinnamon is meant for newer & faster systems, uses 3d acceleration etc, and this laptop will struggle with it...

[Mute Ant]

Failure to Shutdown or Restart might be because your antique BIOS simply doesn't implement the ACPI calls. The noacpi boot option puts the kernel in charge, not the BIOS.

This bug "MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC" does not work well with the newer Ubuntu-based distributions... specifically KDE-Neon but I am guessing anything based on a modern Ubuntu. You don't just get a warning, the boot freezes. I successfully used...

/casper/vmlinuz nomodeset noacpi noapic nolapic idle=poll initrd=/casper/initrd.lz boot=casper

...as the Live Session stanza to get the beast running. You probably don't need all of these but they don't hurt as a first attempt to boot a new distro on an old machine.
nomodeset stops the GPU freezing
noacpi stops failure-to-reboot
noapic stops the kernel freezing (stops the CPU waiting for an interrupt that never comes)
nolapic will limit you to 1 CPU core
idle=poll increases power consumption (stops the CPU waiting for an interrupt that never comes)

"change to a different distro" LMDE2 will probably work out-of-the-box. With the Mint tools it's just what you would expect... stable, reliable, GUI. If there are any 'rough edges' I have never found them.

[MrEen]

He meant to say:

ALT-Sysreq REISUB

instead of REISUO



typo, he knew what he meant to say

Hi AZ,

The O will issue a shutdown instead of the B rebooting. Just so you know.

[jimallyn]

I have a computer that gives that "8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC" message, but it doesn't seem to affect the operation of the computer, so I have always ignored it. If you do decided to try a BIOS update, the Hirens BootCD includes a miniXP. I had to use that to update the BIOS on a computer with a dead Windows on it and which I had already installed Mint on. Hirens contains a number of life-saving utilities. Get it here:

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Mint should perform well on that computer, so it's probably worth spending a bit more time figuring out why it doesn't.

[Healena]

@jimallyn Mind reader! I was wondering how I would go about doing that given that windows is no more, I will give it a shot. In the event that it doesn't cure the bug I'll be forced to use LXLE, since the other ubuntu based distros I have tried all fail to shutdown and restart, and removing "nolapic" from grub cured the system performance but brought about the inability to shutdown or restart again, and restoring it and removing "noapic" gave back the restart and shutdown ability but completely destroys performance.

LXLE is able to shutdown and restart just fine from the live usb and also does not exhibit the fierce performance degradation that using "nolapic" on mint does. I am wondering, why is LXLE able to shutdown and restart (also ubuntu based distro) without the performance of the system being adversely affected? Is there a way I can duplicate how that shuts down and restarts on Mint?

Thanks for all your help.

[Healena]

@jimallyn I agree about the performance, without the nolapic, it was running just fine (save for the shutdown/restart issue).

Not really sure which option I need off of Hiren's. If I hit "default" (used netbootin to create the usb) it shows "Searching for PMAGIC_2012_10_10.SQFS...." and eventually tells me that it couldn't find it (it's definitely there, have seen it) and running the dos programs one just hangs. I did not see any minixp option.

I'm going to try a different USB stick just in case, but it's looking like one way or another, it doesn't want to get flashed! About ready to take that easy option. I AM really curious though, as to why LXLE has no issues either with playing 720p fullscreen at youtube or restarting/shutdowns.

I did notice when trying OpenMandriva LX live usb, that when it failed to shutdown, there was a message about a "soft reset failed".

[Healena]

HOLY COW.

What a mission. Actually the hardest part was getting Hiren's boot CD to boot off of a USB stick. I found a milliion articles about doing this from Linux, not one of them worked. I had to use windows on another machine to make it happen. Seems crazy to me that I was forced to use a program in windows, that installs a linux grub loader to the USB and that somehow every guide for doing this from Linux failed to produce a bootable USB for it.

@Mute Ant - THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR EXPLANATIONS!!! This shed a lot of light and ultimately explained why performance was so bad when using the only option that had seemed to work. I hadn't noticed your post until a bit ago, and having successfully flashed the BIOS to receive the exact same error messages (although LXLE live USB only shows the BIOS bug now, not the ACPI Errors, whilst the Mint Live USB still shows them all) I was just about to install LXLE and I thought I'd check to see if anyone had a solution really quick. Soon as I saw your "idle=poll" I knew I had to try it, so I edited the grub again, removed nolapic and added idle=poll in its place. The machine now is not waiting for whatever it was waiting for when using both CPUs, shutdowns and restarts happening as they should. Mission accomplished.

SOLUTION FOR ANYONE WITH A DELL INSPIRON 1501 WITH RESTART/SHUTDOWN ISSUE:

1. Open Terminal
2. gksudo xed /etc/default grub
3. Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash idle=poll"
4. Save and exit xed
5. sudo update-grub
6. Restart or shutdown (either or, neither work yet until you've rebooted so you're gonna have to forcibly shut it down either way)
7. Enjoy 720p full screen streaming AND being able to shutdown (or restart) properly when you are done. YAY!

[Fiduggin67]

HOLY COW.

What a mission. Actually the hardest part was getting Hiren's boot CD to boot off of a USB stick. I found a milliion articles about doing this from Linux, not one of them worked. I had to use windows on another machine to make it happen. Seems crazy to me that I was forced to use a program in windows, that installs a linux grub loader to the USB and that somehow every guide for doing this from Linux failed to produce a bootable USB for it.

@Mute Ant - THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR EXPLANATIONS!!! This shed a lot of light and ultimately explained why performance was so bad when using the only option that had seemed to work. I hadn't noticed your post until a bit ago, and having successfully flashed the BIOS to receive the exact same error messages (although LXLE live USB only shows the BIOS bug now, not the ACPI Errors, whilst the Mint Live USB still shows them all) I was just about to install LXLE and I thought I'd check to see if anyone had a solution really quick. Soon as I saw your "idle=poll" I knew I had to try it, so I edited the grub again, removed nolapic and added idle=poll in its place. The machine now is not waiting for whatever it was waiting for when using both CPUs, shutdowns and restarts happening as they should. Mission accomplished.

SOLUTION FOR ANYONE WITH A DELL INSPIRON 1501 WITH RESTART/SHUTDOWN ISSUE:

1. Open Terminal
2. gksudo xed /etc/default grub
3. Change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash idle=poll"
4. Save and exit xed
5. sudo update-grub
6. Restart or shutdown (either or, neither work yet until you've rebooted so you're gonna have to forcibly shut it down either way)
7. Enjoy 720p full screen streaming AND being able to shutdown (or restart) properly when you are done. YAY!

I just waned to say thank you for this tip. I had been stuggling for weeks with this same issue and this appears to have solved it. For the first time since January my laptop shut down normal instead of stopping at "Reached Target Shutdown." and requiring a hard power button shut down. I also have the "BIOS bug" appear at boot, and I have the same processor in this laptop.

So, thank you. This is a real relief to solve.

Regards

Bob