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Any issues with hard shut down?

Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2012 2:21 pm
by Walt
Just wondering if there are any long term issues with always turning these computers off via power deprivation, instead of letting the PC go through a more normal shut down routine?

I'm thinking mostly of the mechanical hard drives most of us are using. Don't those 'park' themselves on a normal shut down so that they can be moved around while in the off state with less chance of damage?

The original machine, of course, didn't have a mechanical hard drive, so this wouldn't be a problem. They also wrote their own operating system I believe, so perhaps they eliminated any need for a controlled shutdown in terms of saving data or anything. I have no idea if Linux expects to do some 'housekeeping' before shutting down, but I did notice the other day upon start up that there was some sort of message to the affect of '20 events without checking something' (hard to read... it was a mirror image), and it took a lot longer than normal to boot up. Maybe that was a result of all the hard shut downs???

Is there even a way to shut these PCs down 'gracefully' once loaded with the Nucore software if one wanted to (and once the BIOS is changed to turn on upon receiving power)? Unless there really is no reason to do so, I think it could be a nice feature, especially when one plans on physically moving the machine, assuming there is any truth to the hard drive 'parking' theory.

Re: Any issues with hard shut down?

Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:40 pm
by Chuck
Should be no problems. We've done a few things to help this issue and cycled machines hundreds of times with no problems. Linux does an automatic disc check every 20 boots I believe. There is a way to override it but it doesn't take long and it's good to run.

Re: Any issues with hard shut down?

Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2012 3:54 pm
by Walt
Thanks for the quick response.

I did a little asking around and the concensus seems to be that all modern hard drive properly 'park' on shut down OR power failure, so that part is probably no worry either.

I'm still really happy with my RFM running Nucore.