[geeks] UPSs

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

On Wed, 8 May 2002, David Cantrell wrote:

> Define "the right thing".  What they do is send an interrupt of some kind.
> You need software support for that.

Well, they are -supposed- to register a system-mangement hook either
through a software interrupt vector, trap, or hardware interrupt.  The
default action should be either "power off system" or "user defined", in
which case "user defined" is set through prom (or BIOS or whatever).
Doing "TRT" also includes registering some sort of "shut down right now"
trigger.

What I -meant- to say (but should've been implied) is that:
 "My PC running Windows 2000, my Sun Ultra 10 running Solaris 8, my SGI
  Octane running IRIX64 6.5.8f, and my Apple PowerMacintosh 7300/180
  running MacOS 8.6 all gracefully shutdown upon the user pressing the
  power button or power key, and all have the ability to override this
  either by pressing a different switch or by holding down the power
  button for a longer interval.  Therefore, neither I nor many people
  with machines of approximate age have a strict need to have a powered
  console with which to shut down their computers during a power outage."

I'll qualify this by saying that, at the moment, I have no UPS and am
relying on my own foresight (in the case of machines with delicate PSUs,
like the Octane) to power the machines off prior to a weather-induced
outage, and am relying on journalizing filesystems and backups to cover my
butt the remainder of the time.

--Jonathan