On Saturday 06 February 2010 04:32:54 pm Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> On 6 Feb 2010, at 21:55, Ian Hobson wrote:
> > Eleanor McHugh wrote:
> >> Remembering of course to explicitly flush the file buffer of the status
> >> file and sync the filesystem before performing the reboot :)
> >
> > I'm astonished that the system reboot command does not do this!
> >
> > Closing the file is certainly necessary. Isn't the rest unnecessary?
> >
> > Curious
> 
> If journalling's enabled on the filesystem it's *probably* unnecessary, but
>  let's just say I've been stung enough times to be naturally cautious...

I guess it depends on the system you're on -- when I type 'reboot', my system 
shuts down, including killing all processes (giving them time to flush their 
buffers), then flushing the filesystem (twice) before actually rebooting.

Now, if you did something like 'reboot -f', it would instantly reboot, and a 
journaling filesystem wouldn't save you. Sure, your filesystem would be fine, 
but your data might not, especially if you only had half of it written, with 
the other half in a buffer somewhere.