I installed SuSE 7.3 last night. Most things seem to work fine, but there's an annoying problem in that the shutdown doesn't seem to correctly use the PCs power management. The shutdown sequence (going to runlevel 0) proceeds as you would imagine, but at the critical moment it doesn't finally power down - and, curiously, the *printer* starts ejecting pages as though it's being sent a sequence of new page or linefeeds! Worse, the (soft) power button on the front of the box won't power off either. It is able to reboot, though I guess that's a bit different.
I've looked at the rc0.d scripts, and they look reasonable: it checks /proc/apm and uses "halt -p" if there is power management available. I've not yet tried using halt -p manually or tracing the script. The kernel is just the standard one from the installation, so I believe APM is enabled.
Windows will still shutdown OK, and RedHat 6.1 had no problem with this either, (though that was a 2.2 kernel), so I think the BIOS is capable/setup.
I know 7.3 is a bit new, but does this behaviour ring any bells out there?
Well I don;t use 7.3, but I do use kernel 2.4.12 with apm, and halt does not halt the system anymore. I tried loading the apm module by hand, but it complained (I asked about this on the list a few days ago, but got no reply). But I have no problems with the ATX power off (what you call the soft power off I guess) or with printer spewing. 7.3 uses kernel 2.4.10 I believe, so our problems may or may not be related. However 2.4.12 was an emergency release because 2.4.11 was a disaster, so I should not think 10/12 are that much different. Which does not help you at all ! Sorry, I would like a solution as well. -- Regards Cliff