On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 16:35 +1100, Neil Dugan wrote: > Hi I have an old compaq computer, when it had Fedora on it I could do a > short press of the power button, and the computer would shut-down nicely. > > I have since upgraded to Debian, the problem is that pressing the power > button no longer shuts the computer down. > > Any help in this would be appreciated. The PC is probably using a "modern" (ATX) architecture (modern is a relative term here... :) ), meaning that the power button just sends a signal to the motherboard. How the motherboard interprets this signal is dependent on what you've told it. By default, the signal tells the motherboard to shut down the power supply, thereby shutting the computer off. But if you load APM or ACPI modules, the motherboard is told to ignore the power button signal and just pass it on to the OS. The OS then chooses what to do with the signal. (Usually put the computer into a sleep mode.) At this point you usually need to hold down the power button for 4-5 seconds to tell the system that yes, you really mean power off, and you mean it NOW. That's a pretty gross oversimplification, but that's basically what's happening. So then the answer to your question depends on what your question actually is: Q: How can I shut my computer off now? A: Hold down the power button for a few seconds. OR Q: How can I get the computer to shut off immediately when I push power? A: Unload the APM or ACPI modules, if they're loaded (using modprobe -r or rmmod). Personally, I would strongly recommend the former. There's rarely a good reason to disable power management features unless they're causing stability issues. And in those cases you're usually better of changing the mode of management used (APM or ACPI) instead of abandoning the concept altogether. -- Alex Malinovich Support Free Software, delete your Windows partition TODAY! Encrypted mail preferred. You can get my public key from any of the pgp.net keyservers. Key ID: A6D24837
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