Ubuntu 16.04 droplet can't shut down, any ideas on how to find out why?

May 9, 2018 1.3k views
Miscellaneous Ubuntu 16.04
kbrasee
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kbrasee

I've created a droplet with Ubuntu 16.04, set up the basic security/firewall settings, and apt installed a few things (java, tomcat8, apache2, mysql).

Everything is working fine when the server is running, but when I sudo poweroff it seems to get stuck. After running poweroff it is inaccessible but still shows up as running in the droplet web UI, and snapshots do not work.

In order to get it to fully power off, I need to click the Power > Power Off button in the web UI.

Does anyone know of a way to troubleshoot this, or logs to check to find out why it's happening? I looked in /var/log/* but didn't notice anything related to shutdown problems. I also tried systemctl stopping the services I installed before poweroff, but this didn't help either.

Thanks for any ideas.

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1 Answer
ryanpq MOD May 9, 2018

The power off button in the control panel will send a soft-reboot signal (the same as running poweroff or shutdown -h. After approximately 5 minutes if the droplet has not powered down it will send a hard power off.

If your droplet is getting stuck during power down you can see what messages are being displayed during the process in the console in the control panel (Droplet-> Access-> Console). Your droplet sees the console as it's local keyboard and display so all messages up until power is completely shut off will be seen there. If you run the poweroff or shutdown -h commands from the console you'll be able to review the shutdown process and see where things are getting stuck.

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