laptop doesn't power off

[Ian Smith]

On Tue, 11 Aug 2009, b. f. wrote:
 > On 8/11/09, Tim Matthews <tim.matthews7 at gmail.com> wrote:
 > 
 > > I have tried different combinations of a lot of things and powering off not
 > > working, everything else working fine with no sign of acpi errors in logs.
 > > acpiconf -s 1 (or any other number) operation not supported. I am now very
 > > sure that my bios is up to date. Is there any thing that can be done to make
 > > freebsd's acpi behave like linux's acpi?

[..]

 > Also, have you tried FreeBSD 8 to see if that works for you?
 > 
 > In the meantime, you can safely power down your machine by running
 > 'shutdown -h now', and then manually cutting power.  A bit of a
 > nuisance, but not the end of the world.

That was my suggestion too, but I'm still not clear whether 'shutdown -h 
now' works on Tim's Sony, especially when the message Tim referenced, ie
 http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-acpi/2007-October/004162.html
said that on that poster's Toshiba M40:

    - shutdown -r: works properly
    - shutdown -h: halts the system normally; pressing a key to reboot
      works; the power button does not work--it is necessary to remove
      the battery to shut the machine off
    - shutdown -p: shuts down the operating system, but does not turn
      the power off; the power button does not work--it is necessary
      to remove the battery to shut the machine off

If 'shutdown -h now' does work - to the extent that the power button 
then works without battery removal - then it's a different scenario.

cheers, Ian