chatting @ #systemd IRC with a dev who's taken a look here, A: You seem to be hitting some assert ... as a result, then most likely things go south A: v210 is a bad version to be on I think. A: v208 was the last one before the libsystemd-bus rewrite, and I don't think all bugs with that were ironed out yet. Q: does that suggest "my" problem is kernel, systmed, opensuse, or other? A: Assertion 'bus' failed at src/shared/dbus-common.c:1359, function bus_method_call_with_reply() A: This implies systemd problem. A: Of course, a "systemd problem" could also be construed to be a distribution problem, since this is most likely fixed in git. suggests that the problem is 'our' systemd, v210. Tho, I'm not sure that that assert wasn't an artifact of the downgrade. If it's the case that it IS systemd, then this ^^^ issue is likely in 13.2's systemd, which IIUC is shipping the same v210, sourced from Base:System I'll NOT (yet) switch this to component=(whatever contains systemd) until there's some additional comment. Bottom line -- on 13.1 here, systemd v210 causes restart-on-shutdown; v208 functions correctly.