Unwanted auto restart

[abu (Alfred Bühler)]

You might remember my earlier thread.

Boot works, Reboot doesn't

I have an older Laptop HP ProBook running Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), normally without any issue. The system starts after powering on as expected. But whenever I invoke a restart, e.g. after installing kernel updates, the system hangs with a “Boot device not found” message. What could be the origin of this issue? How to investigate this? I’ve to confess that I applied some hardware changes to this system. The original HDD was replaced by a 1TB SSD. The RAM size was increased to 8 GB. …

Now, I replaced the SSD with the original HDD and installed Gentoo on it. This HDD was completely wiped, so there should be nothing remaining from old installations.

The problem now is, if I execute $ shutdown -h now the laptop shutting down as expected, the light in the power button goes off. But after a second or so, the power comes up again and the laptop boots without interaction.

I have no clue what could trigger this unwanted restart; it’s just annoying. Sidenote: there is no symptom that the power button is faulty, and the issue is fully reproducible.

Furthermore, when I invoke $ halt, the laptop is shutting down, and then it remains powered on with a dark screen.

Any ideas?

[nevj (Neville Jackson)]

@abu

I execute $ shutdown -h now the laptop shutting down as expected, the light in the power button goes off. But after a second or so, the power comes up again

What does poweroff command do ?

I sometimes have that trouble with a VM, and poweroff always shuts it down reliably.
No idea why it would happen with a hard install.
It is like, the runlevel that does a shutdown is not properly defined… but you did a fresh install? How can that be?

[abu (Alfred Bühler)]

@nevj

What does poweroff command do ?

Just the same: restart.

@nevj

It is like, the runlevel that does a shutdown is not properly defined… but you did a fresh install? How can that be?

Yes, it’s a fresh install. I’ll take a look at the runlevels…

[callpaul.eu (Paul)]

Does this happen when you have done a system update is there a file or folder for restart like there is on startup

If you power down with the keyboard does it also restart

[kovacslt (László Kovács)]

Wasn’t this with something like acpi=pci kernel parameter solved?
I’m wrong again, it was a different issue

[nevj (Neville Jackson)]

@abu

I’ll take a look at the runlevels…

I have never had to look, but I think the init scripts used for shutdown must interact with the BIOS in some way. Maybe your machine has a strange bios requireing some modification of the init scripts.