Unsafe power off on power button pressed

I have Ubuntu Server 13.10 set up on a Dell PowerEdge 2950 (Gen II), and whenever I press (not press and hold) the power button the machine doesn't safely shutdown (it instantly powers off), though it does flash the message "acpid: exiting" before turning off.

If I instead run shutdown -h now, it goes through the usual cycle of stopping processes, unmounting filesystems, etc...

Any ideas why this might be? I want the power button to safely shut down the system (unless I hold it down, of course).

Sam Bloomberg

Posted 2013-11-18T06:19:32.013

Reputation: 103

2Have you checked BIOS settings? – gronostaj – 2013-11-18T06:23:37.730

Answers

From looking in the manual, the power button only performs a graceful shutdown if the operating system is ACPI compliant.

By the looks of the answer here, you might need to get the acpi-support package or, according to the second answer, the acpid package.

You could give either of those a try.

Hardware Information directly from the Dell Poweredge 2950 Manual:

Page 13:

NOTE: If you turn off the system using the power button and the system is running an ACPI-compliant operating system, the system performs a graceful shutdown before the power is turned off. If the system is not running an ACPI-compliant operating system, the power is turned off immediately after the power button is pressed

Page 44:

Power Button (Enabled default)

Turns system's power off and on.

• If you turn off the system using the power button and the system is running an ACPI-compliant operating system, the system can perform an orderly shutdown before power is turned off.

• If the system is not running an ACPI-compliant operating system, power is turned off immediately after the power button is pressed.

The button is enabled in the System Setup program. When disabled, the button can only turn on system power.

NOTE: You can still turn on the system by using the power button, even if the Power Button option is set to Disabled.

Source: ftp://ftp.dell.com/Manuals/all-products/esuprt_ser_stor_net/esuprt_poweredge/poweredge-2950_owner%27s%20manual_en-us.pdf

Michael Frank

Posted 2013-11-18T06:19:32.013

Reputation: 7 412

I have the acpid package. I'll try the acpid-support package as well. – Sam Bloomberg – 2013-11-19T03:02:29.217

Well, it seems to have solved itself somehow. Possibly through an automatically-installed security update. Strange, but I'll accept this answer since it does give all the information I would have needed. – Sam Bloomberg – 2013-11-19T05:37:55.367

This appears to be a conflict between acpid and systemd both attempting a shutdown and the result being an immediate poweroff.
Work-around: Disable either.

Disabling acpid: comment out the lines in /etc/acpi/events/powerbtn (or delete that file)
Disabling systemd: edit /etc/systemd/logind.conf and add HandlePowerKey=ignore to the [Login] section.

Seb

Posted 2013-11-18T06:19:32.013

Reputation: 1