Can't shutdown

[MR ZenWiz]

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Ric Moore <wayward4now at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2010-12-13 at 01:08 +0000, ms wrote:
>> On 12/12/10 20:46, MR ZenWiz wrote:
>> > If the shutdown is of your own contrivance, I strongly recommend
>> > killing all your windows before issuing the shutdown.
>>
>> Why?
>
> A normal shutdown does that. Shuts things down cleanly. A false-normal
> shutdown may not. Ric
>
That is not what I've seen.  Terminal windows with open files in, say,
vi, leave behind lock files that bollix up those files on reboot.  OOo
and LO windows get killed such that they come back looking to be
recovered, and if the reboot occurs between automated backup/saves,
you can lose changes.  Browsers that aren't completely brain dead
restore the tabs they had open when they went down, and if you're
running more than one copy they all get restored mixed together, etc.

Also, not all of the open windows get restored, properly or otherwise.
 I rarely get all my terminals back (usually just one) and if I had
nautilus open, only one of it comes back, too.

I'm recalling all this from semi-distant memory because my systems
rarely crash and I usually take the trouble to close everything before
doing the shutdown, so it's been a while since I saw any of this.

It's safe to do a shutdown, but it's not as clean.  That's one reason
why the shutdown command has a time specification and, until that time
comes up, broadcasts messages to all open terminals to exit before the
shutdown.  Yes, it's a UNIX holdover, but it has its benefits, as
said.