GPIO.setup(5, GPIO.IN, pull_up_down = GPIO.PUD_UP)


oldButtonState1 = True


while True:

    #grab the current button state
    buttonState1 = GPIO.input(5)


    # check to see if button has been pushed

    if buttonState1 != oldButtonState1 and buttonState1 == False:

        subprocess.call("echo 1 > /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/bl_power && shutdown -h now", shell=True,

            stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

        oldButtonState1 = buttonState1



        time.sleep(.1)

Drawings n' that

PIBEES

My sound broke in Arch by doing something that buggered around with PulseAudio, which then fucked up ALSA, because PulseAudio is a buggy bloated piece of shit that nobody actually needs.

So maybe you installed/upgraded (possibly automatically) something that did fiddled with PA?

If you do really want to do it this way, since you only care about shutdown, you don't need to store/check oldButtonState and can simplify it to:

GPIO.setup(5, GPIO.IN, pull_up_down = GPIO.PUD_UP)

# endless loop until button is pressed
while GPIO.input(5):
	time.sleep(.1)

# verify button state before switching off
if not GPIO.input(5):
	subprocess.call("echo 1 > /sys/class/backlight/rpi_backlight/bl_power && shutdown -h now",
		shell=True,stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

The if verification is probably not necessary (depending on how Python works), but even so it acts as both a safety against unwanted shutdown (incase something goes wrong), and clarifies the intent slightly. (The event-driven/callback method would make it even clearer.)