In order to use SIGNAL SHUTDOWN, the guest has to explicitly register for the special interrupt that command generates. That code is in the Linux kernel on all the modern RH, SuSE and Debian releases (probably Tao and CentOS too for all I know).
Possible reasons why it isn't registered: 1) A shutdown commenced by capturing the magic SIGNAL interrupt, and one of the shutdown processes disabled all the external interrupt handlers on the way down but something evil happened in the guest and the shutdown did not complete. The only place this problem will be recorded is inside the Linux guest. 2) The guest is waiting on some I/O to complete following the events in #1. If you have a copy of TRACK (the World's Handiest Free VM Utility -- get yours today!) you can look at the virtual machine and see what it's waiting on. 3) you have a very ancient Linux guest without the necessary kernel support installed. To save you time next time you need to look up a message, just type HELP MSG mmmnnnn, where mmm are the 3 letters and nnnn is the 4 numbers in the message id. There are help files for all CP and CMS messages installed. David Boyes Sine Nomine Associates
