Re: corruption during power loss
Nate Amsden wrote:
> Michael Soulier wrote:
> > My biggest complaint about RedHat/Mandrake while I was using them
> > was the fact that if I lost power, the disk caching would cause the
> > filesystem to be corrupted, often seriously so. I'd cringe when I booted
> > up again, because inevitably, I'd be prompted to login as root and run
> > fsck myself. Often I'd have to reinstall a bunch of packages, and it
> > didn't help that doing an rpm -Va to verify everything inevitably returned
> > false negatives on package integrity due to broken rpms.
> >
> > Then I installed Debian. I've had about 5 losses of power since,
> > and each time, the system has come up without a scratch. Minor inode
> > problems easily fixed by fsck without manual control necessary. I noticed
> > the entries in /etc/inittab for powerloss, but the script it's pointing to
> > for me is not installed, so it's not that, although I'd like to know what
> > this /etc/init.d/powerfail script is.
> >
> > So I ask, what aspect of Debian makes it superior in this
> > respect? What's causing the wonderful lack of corruption during power
> > failures?
>
> i'd highly reccomend getting a decent UPS. they are quite cheap, and
> they will not only prevent curroption during outages but it will make
> the system more stable(its usually difficult/impossible to notice
> spikes/brownouts by the time the computer shows signs it may be too
> late..) the life of the hardware will be improved, and a lot of
> headaches will go away.
>
> i can't stress enough a UPS to anyone that is even slightly serious
> about computers no matter what OS or filesystem they run, the risk to
> damaging hardware(IMO) is greater then the risk to damaging software.
> you are in canada so you may not be affected by the serious power
> problems the U.S. is currently experiencing(wide spread black/brown
> outs). because of the deregulation of the power industry here there
> hasn't been a new power plant built in more then 5 years, infact many
> have closed down(i can think of at least 1 nuclear power plant that
> closed where i used to live). the situation is going to get worse before
> it gets better.
>
> UPSs are not just for servers, they should be just as standard as a
> keyboard or a mouse to a PC. kinda sad that people don't take it
> seriously enough. and btw UPSs are really more useful for "cleaning up"
> "dirty" power rather then protecting against full blown blackouts. ive
> seen many instances where APC smart UPSs registered severe voltage drop
> offs(going from 121V to as low as 50-60VA), may not be enough to kill
> the lights, but probably enough to kill your PC(s).
Of course I do agree that a UPS is more than useful.
However there seems to be something in the setting-up of debian
that helps it surviving a loss of power.
It would be interesting to know what it is,
maybe it is something in the configuration of the (root) filesystem,
like making it sync ?
I can see another circumstance where it would be useful
not to have the system to crash like redhat/mandrake do
(or if you could reproduce on these what make debian survive) :
I work at the university where we have students to use machines on
free access,
these machines dual-boot linux (redhat or is it mandrake now ?
BTNTQ :-) and windows.
I regret that students use windows more than linux, but I have to
reckon that
it often happens that linux is asking for admin and windows, even if
scandisk-ing, starts.
The reason of that is very simple, the students turn the computers off
without halting the system
(can't get them to understand they have to halt it), and it seems that
even windows 95 accepts that better
than redhat/mandrake. On the other hand I'm pretty sure I couldn't get
the admins
to install debian instead, but if I came with a handy solution to
prevent crashes,
by configuring the filesystem or whatever in their redhat/mandrake,
they might consider it, as of course it would be less work for them
afterwards :-)
--
Eric deplagne AKA DelTree
E-mail : eric.deplagne@wanadoo.fr
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