[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#718930: sysvinit: poweroff does no poweroff, it does reboot

[Christian Andretzky]

Package: sysvinit
Version: 2.88dsf-41
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.1
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/6 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages sysvinit depends on:
ii  debianutils     4.3.2
ii  initscripts     2.88dsf-41
ii  libc6           2.13-38
ii  libselinux1     2.1.9-5
ii  libsepol1       2.1.4-3
ii  sysv-rc         2.88dsf-41
ii  sysvinit-utils  2.88dsf-41

sysvinit recommends no packages.

sysvinit suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

First of all - I'm not really sure if the programs in this package are really responsible for the following problem.
Eventually it could be a kernel related problem or a problem with the configuration of the default wheezy kernel.

Here we have a lot of various gigabyte motherboards (no idea if the problem happens with other motherboards too).
Many of them are in remote locations and by default not physical accessible. Also it is not sure that the machines
are running permanent. To keep this machines uptodate we use a simple way: The machines are powered on by a
bios timer event once a day, doing their maintenance jobs an then they power off controlled from last maintenance job.

So far - so good. But starting with the wheezy release this does no longer work.

To be more precise: The whole problem depends on the BIOS setting of the parameter 'Power On By Alarm'
(maybe the name of this parameter differs by other motherboards)
If the parameter is disabled (no power on by alarm) all thing are as expected.
/sbin/poweroff produces a really poweroff ...
If the parameter is enabled then the problem happens.
none of the various programs to power off the machine is longer working as expected.
The shutdown happens but than the machine boots again. Only the power switch can stop this.

I've tried various different operating systems and releases and I got the following results:

Debian squeeze    - works as expected
Debian wheezy     - does not work
Knoppix 7.0       - works as expected
Sysrescuecd 3.7.0 - does not work
Ubuntu 12.04      - works as expected
Windows 7         - works as expected

I've also tried to compare the kernel parameter settings between the various Linux distributions with no success.

My problem is that - in the special cases described above - a working poweroff command is essential.

TIA for Your help.

Cheers, Christian