This issue was found when I started to use gentoo again after around three months. I remember that I updated some packages including the portage... the system suspends with "*no more* processes *left in this runlevel*" message. I have solved this problem by removing all files under /etc/ within the package "baselayout", and re-emerge it. but I got another problem that all applications failed to run and complained "error while loading shared libraries: lib stdc++.so.5: cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory", I had no idea and re-emerge gcc together with some other updates, I could not reboot again!!!.. It makes me crazy. any ideas about this problem... mm thanks a lot. daniel