I’ve finally gotten around to poking about and fixing the hanging shutdown and missing sounds error on my Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex installation and thought it best to share the solution with the rest of you.
First off, identify that you are experiencing the same problem that I was by logging out of your desktop and then shutting the machine down from the login screen. If the computer hangs on the ‘Shutting down ALSA’ command then bingo, we have a winner.
To solve this annoying little bug, follow these two relatively simple steps:
Step 1, go to the Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager) and enter your password to access the package manager application. Once in, do a search for ‘alsa-utils’ using the Quick Search functionality at the top of the window, and then check which version you currently have installed. Should your current version be less than 1.0.17-0ubuntu3 then you need to right-click on the checkbox next to the alsa-utils label and select ‘Mark for Upgrade’. Next, click on the ‘Apply’ button at the top and the system should then automatically update this problematic package to its latest version.
Step 2, open up a new terminal window (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and enter ‘sudo gedit /etc/hosts’, supplying your administrative password when prompted. Check the first couple of lines of your hosts file and should there be a line reading ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback then you have a problem. To fix, simply remove this incorrect line and replace with ::1 localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback (look carefully, there is a subtle change between these two lines!)
And that’s it. Saving your updated hosts file and upgrading the alsa-utils package should now have nipped this annoying little problem right in the bud.