When I run "poweroff" (as root), it does a normal shutdown and then reboots instead of powering off. It works in 7.0 (and 6.2).
SysVinit didn't change how it called poweroff/reboot/etc. Sounds like it's a kernel problem in the APM support.
This defect is considered MUST-FIX for Florence Gold release
Hmm... My main install on this computer is 7.0 (actually 6.9.8, RC2 - I haven't had a chance to upgrade yet). I do test installs to a different hard drive. I've upgraded the 6.9.8 install to kernel 2.4.0-prerelease (again, haven't had a chance to upgrade to -release), and it powers off on shutdown just fine. I'll try to dig some more and see if I can figure out what is happening.
Since we're now based on 2.4.0-ac9, I'll assume that the fix has been included. Re-open this bug report if 2.4.0-0.99.5 or later still has this bug. Thanks!
The newer kernel didn't help. After some recompiles and testing, it appears that the problem is with the CONFIG_APM_REAL_MODE_POWER_OFF option. If I recompile the kernel with the i586 non-SMP config except for turning this option off, I can power off on "poweroff" just fine. This is an EpOX EP-MVP3G2 motherboard with the VIA MVP3 chipset and an AMD K6-III CPU. I've got the latest BIOS on it from 12/21/2000.
CONFIG_APM_REAL_MODE_POWER_OFF works fro about half the machines I've seen, and doesn't for the others. Unfortionatly, disabling it is no option as there have been reports of broken bioses doing very evil things in that case.
I am also seeing this on a Asus K7M motherboard. 7.0 works fine.
Still happening on beta3.
This will be fixed by disabling READ_MODE_POWEROFF in the next Rawhide kernel we build (version 2.4.1-0.1.6 or later). If these kernels does not fix the problem for you, please reopen this bug.