> Better yet buy a UPS (uninterruptible power supply, aka battery backup). > This will smooth out the supply and also let TiVo keep running (for a finite > amount of time) when the power goes out briefly. > > There may even be a hack that allows the UPS to tell TiVo to shut down > gracefully, like they can do for "regular" PCs.
Generally there's no need -- unless modified by an inexperienced hacker, the root filesystem runs read-only, and nothing critical sits on /var. You'll note that the Tivo itself has no shutdown button or menu option -- it's designed to just "go down" when needed, and to run 24x7 otherwise. A clean shutdown might therefore not buy much (unless you do run root as rw or keep critical things in /var -- NO NO NO!). But the UPS suggestion is nevertheless a good one in terms of bridging power drops, etc. One of my best friends used to work at a computer rental agency (which his father owned) eons ago. Several years back Inacom bought them, but they were interested in the customer base and not the old equipment. As a result my friend ended up with (amongst other things) forty or fifty APS brand UPS units. He proceeded to connect every electrical device in his small apartment to one. His neighbors were always amazed at how my friend never seemed affected by power outages (and this was California, so they happened a lot). :) Boring story over.
