Solved FreeBSD 14.3 does not fully power off in UEFI mode — fixed with hw.efi.poweroff=0

R

Rolio43

Hi everyone,
Just wanted to share a quick tip for anyone running into this issue on FreeBSD 14.3, especially on Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P motherboards..

Problem:
When running FreeBSD 14.3 in UEFI mode, poweroff (or shutdown -p now) would stop the OS, turn off USB ports, but the CPU and fans would keep spinning — the system never actually powered down.

Solution:
I found that disabling EFI poweroff fixes the issue.
Add the following line to /boot/loader.conf:

Code: 
hw.efi.poweroff="0"

Test:
# sysctl hw.efi.poweroff=0
# poweroff

This might help others who see FreeBSD "hang" with fans still running after shutdown. It seems some UEFI firmwares do not handle EFI_RESET_SHUTDOWN properly, but using the ACPI S5 path (hw.efi.poweroff=0) works fine.
 
Thank you so so much for this tip! 🙏

I never had problem with shutdown on bare metal, but this solution is perfect for VirtualBox FreeBSD guests on Win hosts!

I just tried it on Win11/VBox and for the first time FreeBSD completed shutdown so that VM was closed! 👍
 
It's worth searching the forum first. This problem has been reported and solved a number of times by setting hw.efi.poweroff=0. It typically affects some older PCs. But trying to solve it yourself is a good way to learn how FreeBSD works!
 
vmisev said:
Thank you so so much for this tip! 🙏

I never had problem with shutdown on bare metal, but this solution is perfect for VirtualBox FreeBSD guests on Win hosts!

I just tried it on Win11/VBox and for the first time FreeBSD completed shutdown so that VM was closed! 👍
Click to expand...
I liked using reboot=pci on Linux to get hard reboots; when I reboot I want it legit-rebooted no soft/partial stuff :p
 
Useradd said:
It's worth searching the forum first. This problem has been reported and solved a number of times by setting hw.efi.poweroff=0. It typically affects some older PCs. But trying to solve it yourself is a good way to learn how FreeBSD works!
Click to expand...
Hi,

Thanks for pointing that out!
Sorry for the duplicate post — I really thought I was sharing something useful for others who might hit the same issue on FreeBSD 14.3.
At least now there is another confirmation that hw.efi.poweroff="0" solves the problem on the Gigabyte GA-970A-DS3P motherboard.

Hopefully this helps someone searching the forums in the future!
 
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