Re: Journaling: Surviving or allowing unclean shutdown?

Dan Maas
2001-01-04T22:36:56Z

> > Being able to shut down by hitting the power switch is a little luxury
> > for which I've been willing to invest more than a year of my life to
> > attain. Clueless newbies don't know why it should be any other way, and
> > it's essential for embedded devices.

Just some food for thought - hitting the power switch on my old Indy
actually performs the equivalent of "shutdown -r now"; the system only cuts
the power when it's done cleaning up (sometimes several minutes later). I
suspect most workstation-class systems do similar things.

Of course this creates a confusing distinction between "pulling the plug"
and "hitting the power switch." Uninformed users might even be more
bewildered by the flurry of disk activity after performing the latter; heck,
I wouldn't blame someone who freaks out and pull the plug to make it stop
=).

Also, such a system obviously has little benefit in the event of an AC power
failure.

Dan