🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Sep7.215151.2517@metrosoft.com>
gvh@metrosoft.com (Gordon Van Huizen) writes:

>In article <1992Sep7.041747.10597@ccsun7.csie.nctu.edu.tw>  
>jypai@ccnext.csie.nctu.edu.tw writes:

>> (reboot is the last solution I want)

>It's the last solution we ALL want, but alas the only
>solution we have...

Color me clueless if you like, but hearing this two times in
quick succession prompts me to ask what is so all-fired
awful about rebooting a computer?  Sure, with a large lab, a
complex network, or many users all engaged in important
mission-critical tasks :-), there are obvious reasons why it
could inconvenience people.  (Try waiting out the four hours
it takes to bring up a large Vax cluster from backup tapes.)

Neither above poster reveals their standaloneness, but
perhaps having lived through literally many thousand
computer crashes in which rebooting was the only option that
made any sense, I have something like a reflex that's always
telling me, "This thing could stop dead in its tracks at any
second, without warning.  Am I in the best possible position
for this unhappy event right now?  If not, get right with
the Lord of Silicon!"

An orderly shutdown and restart is certainly less of a
threat to one's future than a power failure or a panic stop.
To be sure, I watch the console like a hawk when I reboot,
half-sure that something's about to go wrong.  In a couple
years of NeXTing, fsck has run during the boot only a couple
times, and that always was the result of running some
cockamamie alpha or pre-alpha brainchild of the would-be
wannabes out there.  Like, whaddaya expect?

But booting, especially in the standalone or tiny network
case, takes a couple minutes at most and is a whole lot
better than sitting and listening to your disk seek its fool
heads off while you twiddle your toes waiting for a cursor
position update.  

Besides, there's sysadmin machismo to be considered, right?
We're supposed to be the masters of it all, eating disasters
for a light lunch and all that.

Of course, if you don't agree, well you go right ahead and
shoot me, I promise I won't feel a thing!  Ignore any
yowling you may hear.

<> Just because I find you fascinating doesn't mean I find you
<> attractive! -- Sandy  Hereld (rhiann@shelley.u.washington.edu)
-- 
Jess Anderson <> Madison Academic Computing Center <> University of Wisconsin
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