Graceful shutdown of Rio Central???

Posted by: laserfan

Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 26/06/2007 23:40

Living in an area of frequent storms & power failures and wondering about subject. I can't find anything to suggest there is any more graceful way to shut-down the Central than to pull the plug on it!!! Izzat so? I can't Telnet into it and try 'shutdown -h now' or some such...?

Just looking for a better way to do this given I have a UPS with Command capability. Anyone?
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 27/06/2007 15:09

Does your Central do something bad if it's not gracefully shut down?

I'm pretty sure it's designed so that yanking the power doesn't hurt it in any way.

Do you ever worry about gracefully shutting down your CD player, your TV, or for that matter, your refrigerator? The central was meant to be an appliance, just like those.

If there is something that's going wrong with your central after coming back from a power outage, we can look at that particular problem and try to fix it.
Posted by: laserfan

Re: Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 28/06/2007 10:49

Quote:
Does your Central do something bad if it's not gracefully shut down?
No, at least not that I know of. I'm just a worrywart!!!! I have some other Linux based gizmos i.e. Toshiba Magnia server and Tivo... takes a long time to re-boot these guys after "pulling the plug" cuz I think they go thru a full file-check after a graceless shutdown. Can't imagine that a sudden shutdown is good for the hard drive(s).

Surprised I guess that so little has been done w/the Central re: hacking it--I think if all we had was Telnet access then I could shut it down...
Posted by: Roger

Re: Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 28/06/2007 12:31

Quote:
I'm pretty sure it's designed so that yanking the power doesn't hurt it in any way.


It is. Same as the car player.
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 28/06/2007 14:40

Quote:
I have some other Linux based gizmos i.e. Toshiba Magnia server and Tivo... takes a long time to re-boot these guys after "pulling the plug" cuz I think they go thru a full file-check after a graceless shutdown.

Fortunately this doesn't apply to the Central.

Quote:
Can't imagine that a sudden shutdown is good for the hard drive(s).

Doesn't hurt them at all.

The only potential issue is if you were in the middle of a write operation when the power was lost, and the central runs a journaled filesystem so even *that* isn't a problem.

Quote:
Surprised I guess that so little has been done w/the Central re: hacking it--I think if all we had was Telnet access then I could shut it down...

Telnet access exists for the Central, it just requires an additional piece of hardware connected to the correct pins on the motherboard. I forget what this hardware is called, but it's been mentioned elsewhere on this BBS.

You can also reach a shell prompt simply by plugging in a USB keyboard and pressing ctrl-alt-del.
Posted by: peter

Re: Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 28/06/2007 14:52

Quote:
The only potential issue is if you were in the middle of a write operation when the power was lost, and the central runs a journaled filesystem so even *that* isn't a problem.

Yes. And if you don't even trust the journalled filesystem, you just have to wait until the Central is quiescent: the only time it's ever "in the middle of a write operation" is when syncing, ripping, or (as indicated by the little "cogs" icon) encoding ripped tracks.
Quote:
Telnet access exists for the Central, it just requires an additional piece of hardware connected to the correct pins on the motherboard. I forget what this hardware is called, but it's been mentioned elsewhere on this BBS.

Actually that's for serial console access. Telnet access just requires installing and running telnetd...
Quote:
You can also reach a shell prompt simply by plugging in a USB keyboard and pressing ctrl-alt-del.

...which is the easiest way to gain enough control to install and run telnetd.

Peter
Posted by: tfabris

Re: Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 28/06/2007 15:43

Sorry. Briefly got "serial shell" and "telnet shell" mixed up. I'm always switching those terms around, since to me, the look exactly the same. I know the difference between them (the former is a hard wired connection requiring physical proximity, the latter is a network connection requring the proper server-side software to be installed and running), I just think of them in the same way. I probably shouldn't.

Anyway, to clarify it for the original poster: You can get a shell prompt right on its screen (via a USB keyboard), you can do a serial connection (with the right hardware dongle connected to certain pins on the motherboard), and you can do a telnet connection (if you can figure out how to install/activate a telnet server via the USB keyboard).
Posted by: laserfan

Re: Graceful shutdown of Rio Central??? - 28/06/2007 23:57

Quote:
You can get a shell prompt right on its screen (via a USB keyboard...
When I run-out of things to play with, maybe I will give this a try, thanks...