ACPI errors

[akuira]

When I shutdown my computer it sends all the KILL and TERM signals and whatnot and then it scrolls some stuff about ACPI shut down and beeps about 6 times and stops there. It never completes the shutdown, I will try to write down the message the next time I shutdown to provide more information. Maybe you already know about this? Thanks!

[Icarus]

hmm, which distro are you using on what laptop?

Off hand, it sounds like ACPI is not enabled. In GRUB you can add acpi=on at the end of the kernel perameters, this has helped some.

[akuira]

hmm, which distro are you using on what laptop?

I am using Mandrake Cooker (10.0 rc1) on a SonyVAIO Laptop (PCG-FXA36)...

Off hand, it sounds like ACPI is not enabled. In GRUB you can add acpi=on at the end of the kernel perameters, this has helped some.

I use LILO, not GRUB :/

Would it help for me to shut down and get the errors it brings up? I just hate rebooting :P

[akuira]

Here is the all the signals that I could write see and jot down when I shut down my computer... Remember it does not ever shut down, just sits there. When I reboot instead of shutdown the messages go away but the screen goes black and beeps 5-6 times:

Stopping xinetd: [ OK ]
Stopping acpi daemon: [ OK ]
Stopping crond: [ OK ]
Stopping CUPS printing system: [ OK ]
Stopping alsa: [ OK ]
Saving random seed: [ OK ]
Removing udev device nodes: [ OK ]
Shutting down kernel logger: [ OK ]
Shutting down system logger: [ OK ]
Stopping portmap services: [ OK ]
Shutting down interface eth0: [ OK ]
Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]
Stopping pcmcia: cardmgr[1416]: exiting [ OK ]
Starting killall: [ OK ]
Sending all processes the TERM signal... [ OK ]
Sending all processes the KILL signal... [ OK ]
Syncing hardware clock to current time [ OK ]
Turning off swap: [ OK ]
Unmounting filesystems: [ OK ]
Unmounting proc filesystem: [ OK ]
Halting system...
md: Stopping all md devices.
md: md0 switched to read-only mode.
Power down.
acpi_power_off called
_

Then nothing happens, the screen remains like this until I manually turn off the laptop.

[Stween]

Originally posted by akuira
Halting system...
md: Stopping all md devices.
md: md0 switched to read-only mode.
Power down.
acpi_power_off called I've been getting this since I upgraded to 2.6.0. I'm assuming it's down to an option I've missed somewhere, because the power off worked great in 2.5.34 ... it's just a matter of time until I get a chance to fix it :) That said, mine reboots just fine, and doesn't do any of the beeping that you describe.

[akuira]

I've been getting this since I upgraded to 2.6.0. I'm assuming it's down to an option I've missed somewhere, because the power off worked great in 2.5.34 ... it's just a matter of time until I get a chance to fix it That said, mine reboots just fine, and doesn't do any of the beeping that you describe.

Unfortunatly that doesn't solve either of our problems :(

[akuira]

I just thought of something, my laptop is from year 2000 and I believe that ACPI is a fairly new standard in laptops. How would I go about determining if my laptop is ACPI compatible? I think the alternative is APM, or something like that... What's the difference?

[sploo22]

See if there is a directory called /proc/acpi. If that exists, you do have ACPI support.

[akuira]

I do have the ACPI directory in /proc... Could my settings be whacky? I tried to configure it and felt like I probably did more harm than good. I haven't noticed any difference in how it acts since I did that, so I don't think anything is wrong... But I'm sure the configuration COULD use some tweaking...

If you need to see any settings let me know what settings/configurations and where to find them... Thanks!

[Icarus]

is there anything in the /proc/acpi/ directory? try cat on all the files, they should contain lots good good stuff that is meaningless to a non-computer user :)

Like my laptop for example...
cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/info
processor id: 0
acpi id: 1
bus mastering control: yes
power management: yes
throttling control: yes
limit interface: yes

[akuira]

Thanks mahdi, BTW yes I do have stuff in here. I am still fairly new to Linux/Unix so please bare with me.

Are there any help sites on ACPI out there? I have had no such luck finding any, not much out there on laptops. :(

[cybertron]

Have you updated your BIOS lately? I recall reading somewhere that some older BIOS's ACPI support is broken.

[akuira]

Originally posted by cybertron
Have you updated your BIOS lately? I recall reading somewhere that some older BIOS's ACPI support is broken.

Updated it as in downloaded an update patch or update as in changed any settings in BIOS?

I have changed a couple of settings in BIOS recently, unfortunatly Sony has made the BIOS very simple and rescricted down to only a few customizable settings, which really blows for me.

[cybertron]

Updated it as in downloaded an update patch or update as in changed any settings in BIOS?

Updated as in downloaded an updated version from Sony's website. I would assume that there is probably an updated version available. I don't know if it will help for sure, but I think the kernel automatically disables ACPI for older BIOSes so it could be that even if you add acpi=on the acpi functions won't work.

[akuira]

Sony has only released one BIOS upgrade for my laptop model and it is for Windows only, it starts the upgrade in windows, then restarts and finishes there. It is PhoenixBIOS and they have a site but I'm a bit nervous to download from them because it isn't made specificly for my laptop.

I don't know if it will help for sure, but I think the kernel automatically disables ACPI for older BIOSes so it could be that even if you add acpi=on the acpi functions won't work.

So would this require me to modify the kernel and recomile it so it sets it not to start? I'm lost, I hate my laptop! :mad:

[cybertron]

Sony has only released one BIOS upgrade for my laptop model and it is for Windows only, it starts the upgrade in windows, then restarts and finishes there.

That's quite a mess Sony has made for you :). I'm surprised that they don't have a bootable floppy based update since I've heard that doing it from the hard drive is really dangerous (not sure why, but that's what I've heard). I assume that you don't have a Windows partition anywhere that you could run it from. I suppose you could try running it from Wine, but I would tend to think that that could cause problems.

I don't remember for sure, but I think there's a kernel option like acpi=force. If your BIOS really is broken, there might be some stuff that won't work, but hopefully the poweroff would. HTH.

-Ben

[akuira]

I just installed a fresh copy of Mandrake 10.0 Community today and I get a error at startup now...

Can't access ACPI events in /var/run/acpid.socket!

Make sure the ACPI subsystem is working and
the acpid daemon is running.

I have also included a snapshot of my Boot Loader Settings if it helps to determine the problem, let me know. Thanks

[binaryDigit]

you might want to try the latest acpi patch for your kernel.
i had problems on my laptop with the acpi stuff that shipped with the kernel i had. after i dowloaded the latest patch and re-compiled it worked well after that.
info on acpi in linux:
http://acpi.sourceforge.net/index.html

[cybertron]

Sorry I disappeared for a while. I was stuck on dial-up at home and it's a pain because we don't have two phone lines. Back at school and my network connection now though:)

Make sure that you install the acpi packages in 10.0. IIRC, they aren't automatically selected by the installer, so I think I had to select them automatically. That could be why it can't find the acpi daemon.