19

When I shutdown/restart get a black (shell-like) full-screen with some large text saying stuff like:

ubuntu 10.10 [129.171175] Restarting system. eco
nds ... [OK]
...
Unmounting weak filesystems ... [OK]
will now restart

Then nothing happens and I have to physically hit the reset button.

1
  • Can you attach the messages in /var/log/kern.log when this happens please! (make sure to get the last power off cycle, not just the new power on cycle)
    – Nick HS
    Oct 18, 2010 at 11:13

3 Answers 3

17

In addition to what Delan suggested, in general you should certainly try different values for the reboot= boot parameter; I'd suggest reboot=b in particular, since that's the most common one for machines to need. Here's the comment from linux/arch/x86/kernel/reboot.c with the possible values:

/* reboot=b[ios] | s[mp] | t[riple] | k[bd] | e[fi] [, [w]arm | [c]old] | p[ci]
   warm   Don't set the cold reboot flag
   cold   Set the cold reboot flag
   bios   Reboot by jumping through the BIOS (only for X86_32)
   smp    Reboot by executing reset on BSP or other CPU (only for X86_32)
   triple Force a triple fault (init)
   kbd    Use the keyboard controller. cold reset (default)
   acpi   Use the RESET_REG in the FADT
   efi    Use efi reset_system runtime service
   pci    Use the so-called "PCI reset register", CF9
   force  Avoid anything that could hang.
 */

The kernel has a number of so-called "quirks" for particular machines that require the BIOS reboot method, but like any hardware quirks database the chances are that it's missing a few. Your computer may be one of the ones that's missing. If you find that reboot=b consistently fixes this for you, then please run 'ubuntu-bug linux' to report a kernel bug asking for this to be made the default for your machine.

You can make this change either on the GRUB command line (hit 'e' on the relevant boot entry and go to the end of the linux line), or, to make it permanent, edit /etc/default/grub and change the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX line, being careful to put reboot=b (or whatever) inside the quote marks.

3
  • Can you elaborate on where to make the change? Is it in grub?
    – itsadok
    Jul 28, 2011 at 7:28
  • @itsadok Yes. I've edited my answer to make that clear. Sep 2, 2011 at 16:54
  • 1
    is there any way to see what's the default reboot mode ? Feb 5, 2016 at 13:01
3

Sometimes the restart doesn't quite work properly. For example, when using Ubuntu on Apple computers, you must add reboot=pci to your boot flags to reboot properly, without hanging on the reboot message like your computer is. I'm not saying that your computer is Apple, but that boot flag may help.

1
  • I'm not using an Apple, just a PC. This doesn't always happen - just sometimes. For example, I just installed some recommended updates and then restarted as recommended - but the machine won't restart. It just shows the previously mentioned lines and hangs at "will now restart".
    – David B
    Oct 17, 2010 at 8:49
3

You can try the method is this link, which is, added:

acpi=force reboot=acpi

into:

/etc/default/grub

The final code looks like:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet acpi=force reboot=acpi"

Please let me know whether it would solve your problem.

4
  • My system (Macbook Pro 11.1, Kubuntu 14.04) was hanging on shutdown (and halt, and poweroff), and your proposed settings seem to have fixed things for me. Thanks!
    – Rob
    Apr 10, 2015 at 10:15
  • Don't forget to sudo upgrade-grub2 after changing the file.
    – earthmeLon
    Feb 10, 2016 at 21:53
  • The "reboot=acpi" option in /etc/default/grub also works for Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Beta2) which is also showing similar hanging issues. Thanks for that. Apr 18, 2016 at 17:50
  • @earthmeLon : It should be sudo update-grub2 rather than upgrade-grub2. I think that is a typo.
    – user238607
    Oct 9, 2018 at 13:35

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