[ale] Best FS to use when doing unclean shutdowns?

[Christopher Fowler]

On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 17:44 -0400, Claudia Morlan wrote:
> Thank you for the ideas.
> 
> Currently, the encrypted partition (/dev/hda7) is not in fstab.  It is
> loaded via a script that gets the encryption key and then unencrypts the
> /dev/loop0 to a mount point.  We will put everything but this encrypted
> partition in RO mode on bootup.  (thanks for that idea).  We'll also see
> about running fsck on every boot.  We can't really lose the data once it
> is
> stored on the device.  About re-wiring the power supply, it's not
> possible
> (at least with our abilities) to make it become a soft-off switch.
> (think
> old AT computers type PS/controller).
> 

You can do what others do.  Have an internal battery that will provide
enough power to shut down the device.

> Thanks.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Christopher Fowler" <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com>
> To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org>
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 5:05 PM
> Subject: Re: [ale] Best FS to use when doing unclean shutdowns?
> 
> 
> > On Mon, 2005-07-11 at 17:00 -0400, James P. Kinney III wrote:
> > > Ah, HA! A basic dumb kiosk box.
> > >
> > > Make the basic boot section RO (/, /boot, /bin, /sbin). Make the
> /var
> > > a
> > > skeleton that gets populated by a rc.local script.
> > >
> > > Put the data collection part on a separate partition. Change the
> boot
> > > scripts so it is NOT automatically loaded. Force a file-system auto-
> > > repair check on every boot before mounting. Use EXT3 (easy to
> install
> > > from RedHat and derivatives) or ReiserFS (Mandrake and SUSE) (Debian
> > > and
> > > Slackware come with both). Use hdparm to setup no write buffering on
> > > the
> > > partition. Use a cron job that runs every minute to perform a "sync"
> > > to
> > > keep everything flushed.
> > >
> > > Use a second cron job to keep a mirror of the "live" partition as a
> > > backup. In the event the fsck fails for any reason, use the backup
> > > partition to overwrite it with.
> > >
> > > Rewire the power switch to only perform a soft-off, controlled power
> > > down and reset.
> > >
> >
> > I like this idea.  You can also reformat the FS storage if it gets
> > beyond repair.  It all depends on how valuable the data is.  If the
> > reason for HDD is because there is so much data but losing it is not a
> > problem then you could reformat on failure to clean and mount.
> 
> 
> 
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