How to shutdown?

[ithinu]

I would like to shutdown, so that the sdcard is in a consistent state:

 shutdown -h now

The board always restarts instead. There is a discussion about this https://groups.google.com/d/msg/beagleboard/qw5zlS4F4p4/chu0J3VXKgAJ but I do not quite get the conclusion. Is it that I can not shutdown the system if there is a power supply without some soldering?

[Graham]

enter 

shutdown -P now

instead of 

shutdown -h now

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