Richard Atcheson wrote:

On Sunday 14 March 2004 01:04 pm, Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC) wrote:

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Yes I am paranoid and the machine is on a dial up connection to my ISP with dynamic IP allocation from my ISP.

I wonder which is the safest method to leave a machine, init 1 or powered off. any comments?

For 30 to 40 bucks you can add a UPS and leave it on all the time and not worry about it. ra Richard if it was only that cheap here. Asides from that I am going to find it a little difficult to cough up the cash required for an APC unit (ie ~R2000) as I believe it is confirmed to work with SuSE, ie if the UPS goes 'flat', the PC is shutdown.

Before you all jump up onto the phone and send me a UPS, I would be interested in getting hold of the circuit diagram for such a APC unit. That way I can make it up myself over time and save a fortune. -- The Little Helper ======================================================================== Hylton Conacher - Licenced ex-Windows user (apart from Quicken) Registered Linux user # 229959 at http://counter.li.org Currently using SuSE 9.0 Professional with KDE 3.1 ========================================================================

On Wednesday 17 March 2004 01:03 pm, S.R.Glasoe wrote:

On Wednesday 17 March 2004 09:36 am, Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC) wrote:

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Before you all jump up onto the phone and send me a UPS, I would be interested in getting hold of the circuit diagram for such a APC unit. That way I can make it up myself over time and save a fortune.

Hylton Conacher

Do a Google search on home made UPS systems. Deep cycle marine battery(ies), voltage regulator and charging circuitry are the main ingredients. If you take basic safety precautions and get help where you aren't certain of what to do you can build your own UPS system for a reasonable price. Especially since you can buy the batteries at reasonable prices.

An example: http://www.markbrown.com/ups.html is an example of a high-end/high-$ setup.

Stan

"Deep cycle marine battery(ies), voltage regulator and charging circuitry are the main ingredients." . . . . . and don't forget the inverter!!! Look, I too am an electrical geek and if you wanna build one because you think it might be a cool thing to do and you might learn something, then that would be a good excuse. ;-) But take it from someone who's been designing switchmode power supplies for maybe ten years now (maybe 20) that you aren't gonna save ANY money by building your own <g> I bought a 650W APC unit for about 250 bucks (several years ago; they're even cheaper now) and at least 50 bucks of that is in the battery. And that price includes the embedded processor and the software to make it talk to your box. I KNOW you gotta have more fun stuff to design, eh?? -- Tony Alfrey tonyalfrey@earthlink.net "I'd Rather Be Sailing"

Lester Caine wrote:

Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC) wrote:

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I wonder which is the safest method to leave a machine, init 1 or powered off. any comments?

Many years ago I used to run a Dec VAX computer, and it was running 24/7, except that over the Xmas breaks, the insurance company insisted that the machines were all shut down - as there would be no one on site. Early January was a problem for Dec engineers - going round replacing the power supplies of the machines that did not start again :)

I have a UPS on each machine and leave them on, not had a problem with power supplies in a long time ;)

I used to be a computer technician, supporting many mini-computers. I'd often notice that failures occurred on power up.

Carlos E. R. wrote:

The Monday 2004-03-15 at 17:42 -0500, James Knott wrote:

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I used to be a computer technician, supporting many mini-computers. I'd often notice that failures occurred on power up.

Or probably simply "detected" at power up.

Well, if they were working fine prior to shut down but not after power up...?

On Monday 15 March 2004 08:00 pm, James Knott wrote:

Carlos E. R. wrote:

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The Monday 2004-03-15 at 17:42 -0500, James Knott wrote:

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I used to be a computer technician, supporting many mini-computers. I'd often notice that failures occurred on power up.

Or probably simply "detected" at power up.

Well, if they were working fine prior to shut down but not after power up...?

Hi Guys, My memory goes back to before 1970, and it tells me that Power On is the most stressfull event in any electronic equiptment, but even more so in computers. The scarriest things were the 150HP Motor-generator units. They could take 6 hours to stor spinning, and when you started them up again the lights dimmed for many seconds!! But seriously, large capacity Capacitators are notorious for failing at power on, esp. if they have completely drained by the time you hit the button PeterB -- -- Proud to use SuSE Linux, since 5.2 Loving using SuSE Linux 8.2 MyBlog http://vancampen.org/blog/ Currently listening to The Resophonics http://www.resophonics.com/music.html --

Doesn't it depend upon how long the UPS can keep the machine up. While we have not had many problems locally they have all been hours long. I am told that the newer UPS systems have a connector so the machine can sence the triggering and go into graceful shutdown if the UPS is on too long. I dont know the brand however. Perhaps this is what Hylton needs? CWSIV On Mon, 2004-03-15 at 02:37, Jerry Feldman wrote:

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004 21:04:24 +0200 "Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC)" wrote:

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To continue uncreasing my uptime value I would like to not have to shutdown the machine at the end of each day. However I assume the end of day shutdown is not necessary on a linux box. The reason I want to do it is that from time to time we have power outages and power outages are not nice to a logged on running linux system.

I am wondering if there is any state I could leave the machine at to ensure that it can be brought back again, should the power fail whilst I am sleeping? My current thoughts are to issue the command 'init 1' but then should the 'attacker' guess my root password I am finished.

Yes I am paranoid and the machine is on a dial up connection to my ISP

with dynamic IP allocation from my ISP.

I wonder which is the safest method to leave a machine, init 1 or powered off. any comments?

-- The Little Helper I leave my desktop on 24x7. The power is stable here, but, for the most part, if the system is idle, a power failure generally will not cause any damage. If you have a journaling file system, such as Reiser, then the restart will be relatively quick.

Carlos E. R. wrote:

The Sunday 2004-03-14 at 21:04 +0200, Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC) wrote:

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I wonder which is the safest method to leave a machine, init 1 or powered off. any comments?

Are you using the computer 24/7? Is anybody else? Is this machine providing services to others? No, No.

If not, power off. Less wear on motors (fans), less noise, less heat, less electricity spent, and last but not least, less global warming.

(If that seems unimportant, just multiply by millions of users...) I see. The main reason I do not want to power down each time I leave the PC is that the next time I power up the machine may not boot up like I am expecting or as it was the last time I was using it. That is the only reason I would like to keep it running, asides from being a green linux newbie and not knowing what to do, without access to this list.

In terms of me specifying the runlevel, I meant, which is the safest runlevel to leave a machine at if not being used and not connected to the internet? For you Carlos I know runlevel 0 but that does not help me keep the machine uptime increasing, which is the primary aim of this exercise. -- The Little Helper ======================================================================== Hylton Conacher - Licenced ex-Windows user (apart from Quicken) Registered Linux user # 229959 at http://counter.li.org Currently using SuSE 9.0 Professional with KDE 3.1 ========================================================================