Previous
Next
Table of Contents
Even on a standalone (No network) single user Linux
workstation, different things are happening in the background.
Just turning the computer off may interrupt important operations
and left the computer in a problematic state (or at least some
subsystems). Turning the computer off may cause problems
but is most cases won't. It highly depends on what is going
on at the precise moment the power is removed. Here is a small
list:
- Some editors or office applications are running
in different windows or virtual console. Unless
you tell them, they won't save the current document.
- You have just save a large document. Linux has not
yet written the document to disk even if the
editor was told that the document was saved. This
write behind facility greatly enhance
disk performance at some price: Turning the computer
off any time may loose data.
- Some database are updated by a
cron
job: Turning
the computer off may left the database unusable.
Previous
Next
Table of Contents