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From: jim@baroque.Stanford.EDU (James Helman)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sgi
Subject: Re: Reboot Key sequence
Message-ID: <JIM.91Apr29212722@baroque.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 30 Apr 91 01:27:22 GMT
References: <1991Apr29.124821@ncd18a.cs.Virginia.EDU>
	<1991Apr29.213439.15902@serval.net.wsu.edu>
Sender: news@leland.Stanford.EDU (Mr News)
Organization: Stanford University
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In-Reply-To: rnelson@yoda.eecs.wsu.edu's message of 29 Apr 91 21:34:39 GMT


   Good heavens NO!    UNIX != MS-DOS

Also Today's UNIX != Seventh Edition.

In the old days, a crash or live halt on an active system would almost
always seriously trash your filesystems.  But today's new and improved
Unixes take great care to make sure that directory and inode changes
are quickly written to disk.  While not recommended, bopping the reset
button usually causes no lossage to files except those currently being
written.  Unfortunately, there is often no alternative when a machine
is really wedged.

I've cold cocked our IRISes with live resets dozens and dozens of
times without incident.  And many times while walking to the machine
room, I have wished for the equivalent of Sun's <L1><A> halt sequence.

As for <L-Ctrl><L-Shft><F12><KPad-/>, I hope it has been retained in
4.0.  It's a big time saver when whipping wedged windows.

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics			Durand 012
Stanford University				FAX: (415) 725-3377
(jim@KAOS.stanford.edu) 			Work: (415) 723-9127