Amiga.org

Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Amiduffer on February 20, 2009, 07:34:17 PM

Title: Question about shutting down
Post by: Amiduffer on February 20, 2009, 07:34:17 PM
Just having had another fun session with this Ubuntu PC after the a fuse flipped and the power cut off, and having to run fsdsk and messing with fixing it after the "unclean" shutoff, and of course having to do the same thing with Windows whenever it happens, it makes using AmigaOS that much nicer, just to flip a switch and shut it off without going through a darn shutoff procedure and the aggravation of checkdisk if you don't. Although, startups and shutdowns are a heck of a lot faster now after I tweeked it and eliminated the worthless eye candy and unneeded programs.

Just curious. Does AmigaOS 4 or 4.1 still have the same ability to just "shut off"?

What exactly is it that allows AmigaOS to just shut off without the problems of the other operating systems. Don't be too technical please.  :-D
Title: Re: Question about shutting down
Post by: stevieu on February 20, 2009, 07:50:05 PM
I'll just post the very short reply (others can add)... ;-)

Yes. One can still wait for all HDD activity to finish and simply switch off to 'shut down', with OS4.x :-)

Steve
Title: Re: Question about shutting down
Post by: murple on February 20, 2009, 07:56:38 PM
If you've got a hard drive and it's being written to, just turning off the computer can damage your files, even on an Amiga. Usually on an old Amiga there aren't a bunch of background processes running which are writing data, so you don't need to go through a formal shutdown to tell all those processes to stop writing and die. If you do though, or if you power off while some program is writing stuff to disk, you're going to have some garbage on your drive.
Title: Re: Question about shutting down
Post by: Matt_H on February 20, 2009, 07:59:52 PM
Quote
Just curious. Does AmigaOS 4 or 4.1 still have the same ability to just "shut off"?

Yes.

Quote
What exactly is it that allows AmigaOS to just shut off without the problems of the other operating systems. Don't be too technical please. :-D

A not-idiotic design. :-) I always felt that icon and window snapshotting and the ENV:/ENVARC: separation had a lot to do with it. With Windows (and sometimes Linux), I find it impossible to force settings to be saved - it's almost as if Windows *moves* settings from disk to RAM on bootup, rather than copying them, and only a clean shutdown will re-commit them to disk.
Title: Re: Question about shutting down
Post by: yakumo9275 on February 20, 2009, 10:00:16 PM
mm fsck.. guess your not running xfs or jfs  :lol: a proper journaling file system is a must...

how can the amiga do it? it can and cant. its reduced mostly by things like immediate writes to disk rather than cacheing writes in memory.

simplistic data structures for filesystem

no bells and whistles.

everything has tradeoffs of course, however you want to look at it.




Title: Re: Question about shutting down
Post by: JimmySage on February 20, 2009, 10:36:10 PM
I think it's more of a case that windows is constantly writing to the disk and those processes need to stop cleanly or you'll get corruption. If it's not the swap file, it's the disk cache or the registry performance counters. Just when you think the disk has gone quiet, the indexing service kicks in!

The amiga is very "quiet" by comparison and generally only writes to the disk when you tell it to. I do remember using a disk cache app years ago where you did need to flush the buffers or something similar before switching the machine off.


Title: Re: Question about shutting down
Post by: Amiduffer on February 20, 2009, 11:20:28 PM
I know you don't shut it off while its writing. A couple of mangled systems have been a painful lesson in that issue. :getmad:

Quote

yakumo9275 wrote:
mm fsck.. guess your not running xfs or jfs  :lol: a proper journaling file system is a must...

simplistic data structures for filesystem

no bells and whistles.

everything has tradeoffs of course, however you want to look at it.


After a long time, I'm finally getting comfortable with Win (relatively) and can at least change registry files and other process' with little fear. I've only installed Ubuntu a few months ago, and its still a mystery. Not sure about xfs or jfs, I'm just using what came with the install CD.
Title: Re: Question about shutting down
Post by: Methuselas on February 21, 2009, 06:29:25 AM
I've always wanted a shutdown command.....


.......for my mouth......


I'm sure many of my exes would agree with this, as well.  :lol: