[Info-vax] New installment in The OpenVMS Consultant: Shutdowns using STARTUP.COM

[Simon Clubley]

On 2020-12-28, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
> Den 2020-12-28 kl. 02:26, skrev Simon Clubley:
>> On 2020-12-27, David Jones <osuvman50 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> The biggest hazard to an orderly shutdown is that you terminal session goes when the network is shut off, leaving your system in a partially shutdown state.
>>> I changed my shutdown symbol from "@sys$system:shutdown ..." to "$SYSMAN SHUTDOWN NODE /minutes=..." (appending /auto/save as needed).
>> 
>> That's another thing that Unix got right big time.
>> 
>> I routinely reboot Linux servers from a SSH session to the server
>> and never have to worry about this.
>> 
>
> As I have always done for VMS servers. I do not see what
> Unix "got right" here that is different from VMS.
>

Shutdown or reboot on Unix consists of sending a message to the
system via a command and then the system takes care of it from there.

On Unix, after the initial shutdown or reboot request is sent by the
user, no shutdown commands whatever are issued within the context of
the session requesting the shutdown or reboot.

VMS has a number of good and unique features, even now, but the
shutdown/reboot architecture and especially the system startup
architecture is far superior in Unix than it is in VMS.

> As long as you do not run SHUTDOWN.COM interactivily
> from a TCPIP based termninal session, you are fine,
> but that is easy to avoid.

But in a properly designed system, that simply should not be a concern.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.