How to troubleshoot slow shutdown?

Question

When I shutdown my computer there is some annoying delay, it takes about 5-10 seconds in 13.10 when in the previous version it was almost instantaneous.

During shutdown I press escape to cancel the splash screen and can see that a big part of the delay is after "Asking all remaining process to terminate...", and then there is "Killing all remaining processes". I have filmed the process with my video camera to check which processes had to be killed, but they didn't chat anything to the terminal.

I previously had this same issue in 11.10, and I resolved it as answered here, however this did not work for me in 13.10.

How to identify the cause of delays in the shutdown process, and fix them?

falconer · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-13T11:34:53.353

18

Turn on reporting for misbehaving applications:

Open /etc/init.d/sendsigs in your favourite text editor, with root privileges (e.g sudo vi /etc/init.d/sendsigs or gksu /etc/init.d/sendsigs). Search for the line #report_unkillable and uncomment it (i.e. remove the # tag). Save the file.
Make sure that apport is enabled: Edit the file /etc/default/apport so it reads enabled=1. (If it was enabled=0 then reboot, so apport can start.)
Shutdown.
Upon the next boot apport should come up with a message telling you that there was some kind of problem with a program. That is the one causing the delay. And there should be a crash report in /var/crash . (If apport doesn't report the name, then just look in the crash file, in the end of the file there will be something like Title: MISBEHAVING_PROGRAMNAME does not terminate at computer shutdown)

edited Dec 13 '13 at 11:34

answered Dec 13 '13 at 10:53

falconer

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I get a report about /sbin/initctl (initctl does not terminate at computer shutdown) – wim Dec 15 '13 at 16:10
Here is a bug report (not really usefully informational, but it does show that at least one other person has had this problem and reported it): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/1261177 – Atari911 Dec 15 '13 at 17:33
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That is my bug report :) – wim Jan 12 '14 at 12:42
no /etc/init.d//sendsigs in ubuntu 20.04 ;c – Klesun Oct 03 '21 at 13:12

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 28 '13 at 05:02

Is the shutdown always slow or can it vary? If the latter is the case, what did you do before shutting down? Did you do something that took a lot of disk-writes that perhaps need to end first before all processes can be terminated?

you could save a list of all processes before shutting down as per:

ps -A > processes.txt

before you shutdown.

You could take a look at any errors that might have occurred after restart as per:

dmesg |tail

Hope this helps

Frank

it is slow everytime, even on a fresh boot – wim Nov 28 '13 at 11:01 — wim, Nov 28 '13 at 11:01

score -2 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 13 '13 at 12:19

-2

Have you tried this? Open terminal and type

sudo shutdown now

This might help.

edited Dec 13 '13 at 12:19

Waldir Leoncio

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answered Nov 08 '13 at 17:01

Habi

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Thanks, but it didn't give me any more information than I already saw by checking the output with a video camera – wim Nov 11 '13 at 17:29
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Why would this make any difference whatsoever? – Ken Sharp Jul 04 '16 at 18:12

How to troubleshoot slow shutdown?

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