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In order for me to boot into 12.04, I have to add the parameter acpi=off in grub. Any other options as specified here do not allow me to boot into Ubuntu.

My question is simple, what does setting the parameter acpi=off actually do?

And more importantly does repeatedly booting with acpi=off damage or harm the computer in anyway?

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

Using acpi = off disables your Advanced Configuration and Power Interface off temporarily while booting Ubuntu. If you have to add the acpi = off to let ubuntu boot successfully, it means that the ACPI on your computer isn't compatible with this version of ubuntu.

I don't think using acpi = off repeatedly wrecks your computer, because it only disables ACPI temporarily.

However, if you don't want to add the acpi = off parameters every time you boot, you can disable the new card (BIOS) or disable ACPI (also from the BIOS). Use the second option if you can't find the New Card Interface.

But, if you have Windows, disabling ACPI from the BIOS may wreck Windows and the computer will force you to reinstall it. So do that if you have a hidden windows recovery partition in your computer.

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How should disabling ACPI harm Windows? It disables ACPI-usage in the Linux kernel, but not modify the ACPI-table on the BIOS. Windows can't be affected. – user unknown May 19 '12 at 1:25
I actually disabled ACPI from the BIOS myself, and windows got an error of having "a serious problem" when I booted it. Fortunately, the computer had a hidden recovery partition (which I didn't know) and fixed the problem by itself. Then I searched online and found a bunch of people (no recovery partitions) that had to reinstall windows after disabling ACPI from the BIOS. But I'm also not so sure why. – Emerson Hsieh May 19 '12 at 1:31
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Ah - you disable it in the BIOS, not in the GRUB boot-options? I thought you talked about the latter. – user unknown May 19 '12 at 1:42
Oh. I edited the question. Sorry for causing confusion. – Emerson Hsieh May 19 '12 at 2:03
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Thanks emersonhsieh, that is all I needed to know. – Fido May 19 '12 at 14:34
up vote -1 down vote

I had the same problem.

This is the fix:

Edit /etc/default/grub.

In the grub file, change GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to be GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi_osi=Linux acpi_backlight=vendor".

Then do sudo update-grub and reboot! Courtesy of wub.

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This answer seems unrelated. It does not address this question. – Mahesh Sep 24 '12 at 18:19

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