One more puzzle.... I can set the hardware clock manually from the command line as root with sudo. Nevertheless commenting out the appropriate command in /etc/init/hwclock-save.conf did solve the problem with the machine failing to shut down.
One more puzzle.... I can set the hardware clock manually from the command line as root with sudo. Nevertheless commenting out the appropriate command in /etc/init/ hwclock- save.conf did solve the problem with the machine failing to shut down.