System hangs on shutdown

[Andreas Goesele <Goesele@hfph.mwn.de>]

Hi,

so far twice in around one week my system hung on shutdown. The last
message was:

Stopping internet superserver: xinetd

The system then is already totally irresponsive and I have to unplug
it. Very bad, as the file system isn't unmounted yet.

I have an up to date woody system, but a 2.4.24 kernel.

A normal shutdown in syslog looks like this:

Mar  2 21:21:59 localhost init: Switching to runlevel: 0
Mar  2 21:22:08 localhost snort: Snort received signal 15, exiting
Mar  2 21:22:08 localhost kernel: device eth0 left promiscuous mode
Mar  2 21:22:11 localhost xinetd[324]: Exiting...
Mar  2 21:22:12 localhost kernel: Kernel logging (proc) stopped.
Mar  2 21:22:12 localhost kernel: Kernel log daemon terminating.
Mar  2 21:22:12 localhost exiting on signal 15

The problem shutdown like this:

Mar  3 21:21:12 localhost init: Switching to runlevel: 0
Mar  3 21:21:18 localhost snort: Snort received signal 15, exiting
Mar  3 21:21:18 localhost kernel: device eth0 left promiscuous mode

So I indeed would suspect that there are problems with the shutdown of
xinetd.

How could I investigate the situation further? Or better: How could I
prevent the problem? And a dumb question: Why is a shutdown of xinetd
necessary anyway? (A computer which isn't on wouldn't offer any
services, would it?)

Thanks a lot in advance!

Andreas Goesele

-- 
Omnis enim res, quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur,
nondum habetur, quomodo habenda est.
                                      Augustinus, De doctrina christiana