Why am I not able to shutdown, log-off and restart after an upgrade to Ubuntu 13.10? [closed]

Had the same problem and found out that even "shutdown" command from terminal didn't help much either.

I am using also Cairo dock and found out that if I try to restart or shutdown from Cairo, it does.

Silly may seems but for me worked.

Same problem after upgrading from 13.04 to 13.10 on an Asus desktop running Unity. The problem occurs only after SUSPEND/RESUME, either manual SUSPEND via the Shutdown menu (upper right corner of screen) or by the System Settings/Power suspend timeout after 30 minutes (current SUSPEND setting).

Starting a terminal session and running 'sudo reboot' or 'sudo shutdown now' takes the O/S into single user mode (I believe). A Control-D continues the process a little further. At that point, a Control-Alt-Delete reboots to the login screen where the Shutdown menu (upper right corner) is once again available to restart or shutdown.