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How to fix Ubuntu shutdown problem with blinking white cursor by using acpi=force.
I had found this fix once before, but then when I went to look for it, I had to dig for about an hour to find it again, so I'm posting it here. I've seen this both on Jaunty Jackalope and Karmic Koala. The system would try to shut down but it would show "System Halted" but then just have a blinking white cursor and the system wouldn't shut down until you pressed the power button.
This fixed the problem for me:
Modify /etc/modules and added
apm power_off=1
Then I modified /etc/default/grub and added this after quiet splash (this might be /boot/grub/menu.lst if you are running anything prior to Karmic Koala that runs off of the new Grub 2 boot loader)
acpi=force apm=power_off
After saving that file I had to run
sudo update-grub
And that seemed to fix it for me. I'm not sure the /etc/modules modification is necessary. I don't remember doing that the first time, but it was a while ago. Hopefully this helps someone else that is having problems with Ubuntu 9.10 shutting down.
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Filed Under: Ubuntu, Shutdown
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"[SOLVED] Ubuntu Hanging at Shutdown - Blinking Cursor"
Comments
2
Jirka Dec 27, 2011
Thx a lot!
It works for me on IBM T20 and Lubuntu 11.04
Messages "Power down; System halted" resolved.
Power off; Hibernation as well as Suspend functions work as expected








1
AHFX
Notes: To turn on remote desktop on a virtualbox machine on ubuntu, do the following:
1)Power off the virtual machine
2)Go to settings for the virtual machine
3)Set the display settings for the Remote Desktop and choose a port (Don´t use 13389 if you are running NoMachine)
4)Start up the Virtual Machine
5)Using the IP of the main box that is running the virutal machine (don´t use the ip address assigned to the virtualbox!!!!) connect via remote desktop.