Home / ubuntu / Questions / 6122
Accepted
Huygens
Asked: 2010-10-12 12:30:47 +0800 CST

How to see what's going on during shutdown

  • 772

Since a few weeks, Ubuntu freezes almost everytime when I shut it down.

I know it because the shutdown animation stops and nothing is responsive: Ctrl+Alt+Del or AltGr+Syst+reisub don't make any difference.

I have tried to look at various log files in /var/log but only INFO level message are logged.

My hope to solve this problem would be to do a verbose shutdown, one where I could see what's going on, and so what's causing the problem, so I could start solving it.

Therefore, as the title suggest it. Is there a way to see what's going on during shutdown? I could even go to the extreme of doing a step-by-step shutdown if this is the only way.

Thanks for any tips.

shutdown system

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Temporarily disable the slash screen

    You can temporarily disable the splash screen and "quiet" mode by editing the boot command in GRUB:

    1. Reboot and hold Shift as the computer turns on. The GRUB menu should appear:

      GRUB menu

    2. Press e to edit the command for the first entry, then use the keyboard to delete the words quiet splash:

      GRUB command editor

    3. Press Ctrl+x to boot.

    This setting will last until the next reboot.

    Permanently disable the slash screen

    You can make the change permanent by modifying /etc/default/grub. Comment out this line:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

    and add this one:

    GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""

    Run sudo update-grub and then reboot to make the changes take effect.

    Warning: If you mess up this file your computer may not be able to boot up again. Let someone here know if you're not sure how to make the modification.

    • 19

  2. When shutting down, enter tty1 by pressing ctrl + alt + F1, and then from there shut down the desktop manager.

    sudo service gdm stop

    or if you're using 11.10, then

    sudo service lightdm stop

    then shut down the computer by running 

    sudo halt

    Now you should see all the infos.

    • 0