On Apr 26, 22:50, Iggy Drougge wrote:
> >> I have no respect for a system which needs to be pampered before one
> >> may hit the power switch, so nowadays, I just flick the switch when
> >> I feel like it, be the system Windows, Mac or UNIX. Haven't had the
> >> opportunity with VMS yet. =)
I can do that with my SGIs running UNIX, because they have soft power that
actually works. The OS intercepts the sinal from the switch and does a
clean shutdown. (Unlike the Sun Ultras I've used, where the soft power so
rarely works when we want it to, that we've often ended up yanking the
power cord because nothing happens).
> NetBSD and OpenBSD boxes seem to boot fine, albeit slowly.
Because they have to check and sometimes fix the disk. If shut down clean,
they don't have to do that.
> So what if they're writing to disk? If they have proper file systems that
> won't really matter. Mind you, at least I always check that the drive
lights
> aren't on.
Having a proper file system won't prevent corruption at some level. What
do you mean by "proper", anyway? Even a journaling file system like XFS
can't preserve data that was being written when it was interrupted, and you
WILL get some data corruption, even if it doesn't corrupt the structure of
the disk (making a bad block). Just because some systems silently deal
with most problems next time they start up doesn't mean you've not done
some damage. One day it won't be repairable without intervention.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Network Manager
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Received on Fri Apr 27 2001 - 02:19:55 BST