On Fri, Jan 10, 2003 at 11:58:18AM -0800, Christopher Lyon wrote: > I have a bunch of RH8.0 machines that are sitting in Telco closets and > was wondering if I am digging myself a hole with these things powering > on and off without using the shutdown command. Am I going to kill or > break something but basically just unplugging these machines?
It depends upon what you are doing with them. Looking at the parts... - The kernel itself doesn't care if it goes away. It is just a program. - The file system itself, if using the default ext3 which is journaling, should also be fine with abrupt power loss. - What userland programs and daemons are running? Are they going to lose data or state in abrupt power loss? That last one is the biggie. If you are using these things as routers then pulling the plug will only lose traffic going through the machine right then, and if you are pulling the plug you presumably want that router to go down. At an extreme contrast, if you are running a big database you will lose committed data. Because databases care about data loss you can probably set it up to commit early and often. This might cost some performance, but seems workable. The real problems are everything in the middle. Are you running an e-mail server? You will likely lose messages that are in progress when the power goes out. I think the answer to your question is in a careful census of all the software you will be running, and how each of those programs will deal with losing power. -kb -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?subject=unsubscribe https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
