Problems when shutting down

Help
1

Hello,

i am new to nixos/ linux.

If i shutdown my PC it sometimes doesn’t power down.

I see the shutdown text like normal and shortly after this the displays go dark. Normally the fans should stop spinning but this doesn’t happen.

My peripherals have no power and nothing is shown on the displays.

The rgb from my gtx1660 is still on and the fans are spinning.

I have to hold the power button for ~3s to shutdown completely.

Is there a log where i can find what the problem during the last shutdown was? (How do i open it?)

I already searched the forum for similar cases but couldn’t find a solution.

I am not sure what info is relevant so i didn’t include all my Hardware etc. if it is needed i can provide it. (If the info should come from a command please include the command in the comment)

2

journalctl --boot -1 -e will bring you to the bottom of the logs of your last boot.

This sounds like a firmware issue, though, I expect those logs to contain nothing useful (but please share them anyway, just in case).

3

Thanks for the help.

The next time this happens i will try the command.

4

@TLATER here is the output from journalctl --boot -1 -e > problem.txt

I waited ~10min before i pushed the power button. (The gtx1660 led was on and the fans spinning)

5

Nothing unusual I can see. I’d suggest trying a firmware upgrade.

6

I have the nvidia driver like this in my configuration.nix:

  hardware.nvidia = {

    # Modesetting is required.
    modesetting.enable = true;

    # Nvidia power management. Experimental, and can cause sleep/suspend to fail.
    # Enable this if you have graphical corruption issues or application crashes after waking
    # up from sleep. This fixes it by saving the entire VRAM memory to /tmp/ instead
    # of just the bare essentials.
    powerManagement.enable = false;

    # Fine-grained power management. Turns off GPU when not in use.
    # Experimental and only works on modern Nvidia GPUs (Turing or newer).
    powerManagement.finegrained = false;

    # Use the NVidia open source kernel module (not to be confused with the
    # independent third-party "nouveau" open source driver).
    # Support is limited to the Turing and later architectures. Full list of
    # supported GPUs is at:
    # https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules#compatible-gpus
    # Only available from driver 515.43.04+
    open = false;

    # Enable the Nvidia settings menu,
	# accessible via `nvidia-settings`.
    nvidiaSettings = true;

    # Optionally, you may need to select the appropriate driver version for your specific GPU.
    package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.stable;
  };

I installed the system new with nixos version 25.11 (the current stable one).
The firmware is here defined:
package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.stable;
Is that correct or do i need to update the firmware with Fwupd?
If it is correct is it just an firmware issue and i can’t do anything?

7

That’s not firmware, but a Linux kernel module. If it was causing the shutdown failure you’d expect to see something in the logs.

That config is IMO quite wrong, for all the same reasons everybody seems to be getting nvidia config wrong - you have a lot of configuration in there that is plain silly, but that’s unlikely to be the cause of your issues.

fwupd is one way to do that, but read the official wiki: Fwupd - Official NixOS Wiki

A lot of hardware vendors don’t support fwupd, unfortunately, so you may also have to look up your hardware vendor’s website and manually download a bios update or something.

It’s a guess, it could also be hardware failure of some kind. The kernel doesn’t say anything, so as far as software goes there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong; doesn’t mean that’s actually true, either.

8

Thanks again for the help.
As i don’t see my graphics card with fwupdmgr get-devices i decided to install the newest firmware via my dual boot windows11 installation i will let you know if this worked.

As i don’t have this issue with win11 i don’t think it is an hardware issue.

9

I really don’t think your graphics card is related to this at all. Your GPU lights stay on because the power isn’t cut for some reason, not because the GPU is keeping things alive.

10

@TLATER again thanks for your help.
The problem still persists. As i just have to push the power button for a few seconds it isn’t a huge issue.
What i did try:
I changed the config to this: (Thanks to your PM)

  hardware.nvidia = {
    powerManagement.enable = true;
    open = true;
    # Illustration purposes only, this package does not yet exist
    #package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.legacy_580;
  };

Also huge thanks to you for the info that the “normal” config with

package = config.boot.kernelPackages.nvidiaPackages.stable;

would break my System in the future if my card is no longer supported. (Which IMO is completely against nixos’s idea of one config just keeps working on the system if you don’t change it.)

I updated the firmware of my mother board to the latest version: H310M PRO-M2 PLUS version 7C08v17 (released 2024-08-09)

11

Not what NixOS is about - the version is also part of your configuration. The configuration should always have the same result unless you change it (including updates) or the hardware changes.

Think about it; there is no way to ensure that a software update does not cause a change, because software updates are by definition changes.

NixOS’ reproducibility has other benefits, I can for example copy your configuration and try it on my end, at which point I can be sure I’ll get the exact same behavior. This isn’t possible with traditional distros.

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