Proper power down procedure -- BBW with Debian

GoogleGroups
1

What is the proper procedure to power down my beaglebone white running Debian Image 2014-05-14? This morning, I was unable to connect to the BBW from my PC via USB, and finally had to re-flash Debian to my SD card to fix the problem. I suspect that the SC card I had been using was corrupted because I was not turning off the BBW properly.

My BBW is powered via the USB cable to my PC. When I execute “shutdown” from the PC, I get the usual warning that the BBW is about to go into maintenance mode, but the power LED stays on and the other LEDs continue to flash in their heartbeat pattern. Scanning the forum here, “shudown” or “shutdown now” should be protecting the BBW from corruption when I turn off my PC – but I’m not sure if this is indeed the case given my problem this morning.

Any guidance would be appreciated.

2

I now do :
sudo halt

“Polite” shutdown is not so important when you are the only user on the system.

I then wait for the power light to go out, it sometimes takes a whole minute to flush all changed file blocks.

Jon

3

Thank you very much jmelson – that does the trick.