Shutdown command does nothing

Question

I can't shutdown my ubuntu 14.04 anymore.

# shutdown -h now

Nothing happens at all

# halt -h
# halt:Unable to execute shutdown: exec format error

Shutting down from gui just messes up the lightdm. After restarting the lightdm everything is normal again.

Important sidenotes:

I have issues other than that (hostnames cannot be resolved ), which imo are all trigged by my new Samsung SSD 850 Evo and waking up from suspend. It mounted everything read -only and after a manual shutdown those problems Started .

But firstly I wanna solve the shutdown issue

thx in advance

update: after running

dpkg-reconfigure resolveconf

for a felt 1 mio times, dns resolving works again.

The file ../run/resolvconf/resolv.conf was missing, which again makes me think, some file might be missing for the shutdown command as well.

update 2: as pointed to in the comments, the init 0 and init 6 command works.

@Ravan same as with the halt command poweroff: Unable to execute shutdown: Exec format error — prumand, Aug 22 '15 at 07:54
@user1136340 have you tried those four answers....in my previous comment .Ok,then try this — Ravan, Aug 22 '15 at 07:57
Ah nice. The init 6 (and most likely the init 0 commands work too). But I guess the shutdown command still would be better, mainly because of notifications. http://askubuntu.com/questions/578144/why-doesnt-running-sudo-shutdown-now-shutdown (oh no, markup troubles ;) )
@thebluesquirel that doesn't work — prumand, Aug 22 '15 at 08:15
Just curious I've always used poweroff... Is poweroff used for something different? — , Aug 22 '15 at 23:42

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 22 '15 at 10:57

1

I couldn't find anything, so I guess the shutdown script was corrupted. To fix it I did the following

# which shutdown
/sbin/shutdown
#  dpkg-query -S /sbin/shutdown
upstart: /sbin/shutdown
# apt-get install --reinstall upstart

and now it works again.

I guess the next thing is to find out, why those files get corrupted. Thx for the help

answered Aug 22 '15 at 10:57

prumand

61

1

Sometimes the solution is tricky but easy :) – A.B. Aug 22 '15 at 11:32

Shutdown command does nothing

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