laptop doesn't power off

[Ian Smith]

On Sun, 9 Aug 2009, Tim Matthews wrote:
 > > Hi,
 > >
 > > On 08 August 2009 pm 15:21:17 Tim Matthews wrote:
 > > >* I have a sony vaio sz483n. The powering down works almost fine
 > >
 > > *>* up until the last step. The screen goes clear as it is about to
 > > *>* power down but then it just stays in a kind of on state.
 > > *>*
 > > *can you run a normal 'shutdown now' and press then the power
 > >
 > >
 > > button?
 > >
 > > Erich
 > >
 > >
 > If I run "shutdown now" The last thing that gets printed to the screen is
 > enter path to shell or press return for /bin/sh. This hasn't attempted to
 > power off my laptop so holding the power button down does still work but is
 > it safe to do so? Even if so I would really prefer a working implementation
 > of soft off like M$ windows and linux can do.

Does 'shutdown -h now' work ok?  It's certainly safe to kill power if it 
has halted, but of course that's only a workaround till finding out why 
and how shutdown -p is failing on it.  And if not, it's more data ..

cheers, Ian