🚀 go-pugleaf

simsong (Simson L. Garfinkel) writes:

>In the last issue of NeXTWORLD, there is a serious technical error on page 89.

>In the article "Sysadmin Hints and Tips," by Daniel Miles Kehoe and Seth T.  
>Ross, readers are instructed to put their machine into single user mode by  
>pressing "both Command keys and the tilde (~) key simultaniously to get the NMI  
>monitor."  The users are then instructed to type "monitor" to get the NeXT into  
>ROM monitor.

>This is wrong.  You should type "halt" to get the machine to do a clean  
>shut-down.  

Oooooh....that could be responsible for some major loss of files...
Not cool at all.  Of course, there are major disclaimers so I'm sure
they're basically shielded from liability (I hope they are for their
sake!)

In case anyone isn't familiar with why this is bad, just typing
'monitor' does NOT do a sync before it halts your system.  This
could result in filesystem corruption.  The most likely problem
would be a few files that were open being lost.  
When you boot the next time, if fsck goes through (the 'Checking
Disks...' phase for you who boot with the icons) OK, then you're
probably OK.  If it fails, it will dump you into single user mode,
in which case you will have to run fsck by hand and might lose some
files (hopefully not important ones!)

Typing 'halt' does a sync, then halts the system as though you typed
'halt' at a root prompt.  
-- 
David Lemson                                                 (217) 244-1205
University of Illinois NeXT Campus Consultant  / CCSO NeXT Lab System Admin
Internet : lemson@uiuc.edu                 UUCP :...!uiucuxc!uiucux1!lemson 
NeXTMail accepted                                   BITNET : LEMSON@UIUCVMD