The Legacy Power Interface
ACPID (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface event daemon) is a background service in Ubuntu and other Linux distributions that listens for specific hardware events related to power management. For example, it detects when you press the physical power button on your computer case, close the lid of your laptop, or unplug the AC power adapter, and then executes scripts (like initiating a safe shutdown or putting the system to sleep) in response to those hardware triggers.
While acpid is crucial for bare-metal laptops and desktop PCs, it is often completely redundant when running Ubuntu inside a Virtual Machine (VM) environment like VMware, VirtualBox, or KVM. Modern hypervisors typically handle power events gracefully by sending ACPI signals directly to the guest OS kernel or systemd, bypassing the need for the older acpid daemon. Disabling it inside a VM removes an unnecessary listening process.
How to Disable the ACPID Service
You can stop and disable the daemon using systemctl.
- Open your Ubuntu Terminal or connect to the VM via SSH.
- Stop the currently running service:
sudo systemctl stop acpid.service- Disable the service to ensure it does not start automatically when the VM boots:
sudo systemctl disable acpid.service- (Optional) Mask the service to guarantee it cannot be started by other services:
sudo systemctl mask acpid.serviceThe daemon is now disabled. Your virtual machine will still shut down gracefully when you issue a shutdown command from the hypervisor console, as modern systemd will intercept and handle the virtual ACPI power-off signal directly.