gdm amd64 behaviour on shutdown different from that on i386

Hi everybody

 From the gdm login screen, if I use the "actions" menu to shutdown the 
system, what happens differs on my amd64 desktop from my i386 netbook.

Specifically, on the i386 netbook, the screen switches to tty1 and the 
shutdown messages are displayed. On the amd64 desktop, the screen goes 
black, nothing more is displayed, and the monitor indicates that output 
is no longer being received from the computer.

I am running Debian testing on both systems and just finished upgrading 
to linux-image-2.6.39-2-amd64 version 2.6.39-3 on the desktop, and the 
gdm version is 2.20.11-4.

I believe the above behaviour is a bug. It doesn't happen when using 
"reboot" from the "actions" menu, ie when rebooting, the screen switches 
to tty1 and the shutdown messages do indeed appear.

As far as I can determine, this behaviour started sometime in late April 
or early-to-mid May. Since gdm version 2.20.11-4 was installed last 
December, the problem does not appear to be with that package. Nor does 
it appear to be kernel-related, since the same thing happens with both 
my 2.6.38 and 2.6.32 kernels, which I still have installed.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what is causing this behaviour?

Jack Warkentin, phone 902-404-0457, email [email protected]
39 Inverness Avenue, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, B3P 1X6