Heed the complaints... You've been lucky...
Imagine what would happen if the power went out at 4:00AM while Linux is
writing it's whereis database out... (BTW: this applies to -ANY- operating
system...)
The hard drive write head is powered up and writing sectors... now the power
goes out just long enough to screw up the drive electronics... but not
enough to shut off the write electronics.
The head is in write mode, so as the drive continues to spin. Several
important tracks are overwritten, effectively trashing your system.
Newer drives cannot be "low level" formatted, but can have their timing bits
erased...
Result: upon power up you may even have a hardware failure.
While Benjamin's suggestion is good, APC (and other manufacturers) also
supply UPS's with a hardware cord that plugs into the serial port.
Since you might not be around to shut of the computer during an outage, the
UPS can tell Linux to shut itself down if power is not restored quickly.
Ideally your computer would also turn itself off at this time.
Normally these units pay for themselves over and over.
As most modem/cable/DSL user's know... it's a good idea to get a UPS with
built in surge suppression for multiple devices types if you can find
them... I.E. Cable TV, Modem, AC...
-JMS
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Marcel
Sent: Sunday, May 28, 2000 7:33 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [expert] Electrical Outages and Linux
Benjamin Sher wrote:
>
> Dear Frank:
>
> You might consider investing in an APC battery (under $100). I have had
> one since day one. It give you an extra 7-13 minutes to allow you to
> shutdown Linux gracefully in case of an outage or storm.
I have to admit I'm a bit confused about this ....
I've been running Redhat (starting from release 5.2 - currently using
6.1) both at home & work for a couple of years and just recently tried
Mandrake 7.0 at a friends suggestion 3 months or so ago, I also have a
couple of FreeBSD (3.0) machines kicking around and none of them have
ever failed to come backup after a power outage or accidental shut-down
and I use nothing more than a generic powerbar.
Yes .. they complain a bit at startup ... check the various partitions
and tell me they were not properly unmounted - but basically that's it.
MDM
