Kubuntu/Ubuntu does not remove everything from memory at shutdown

[Steve Morris]

On 13/03/10 06:14, Reinhold Rumberger wrote:
> On Friday 12 March 2010, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>    
>>> As explained before: no, it's the booting OS' responsibility to
>>> put the hardware into a state in which it can use it.
>>> For more detail, read Howard Coles Jr.'s reply - he explains
>>> this pretty well.
>>>        
>> Thanks. I went back over that and indeed HCJ's reply was very
>> informative. Not being a hardware dev I cannot agree nor disagree
>> with his stance, but it sounds more "ideal world" than status
>> quo.
>>      
> I'm actually finding it surprisingly hard to argue that this is
> completely Win's fault, since I think that different OSes should play
> nice and cooperate. Since MS takes a "fuck everybody else" stance on
> this matter and actually encourages driver development that ignores
> others, I think this is more a problem in the Win world than the
> Linux/Unix world, which actually tries to be agreeable. MS should
> therefore start playing nice (not overriding boot loaders,
> recognising the existence of other OS', etc.) before I'll change my
> opinion in this matter.
> (To summarise: I'm pissed at MS and think they should solve their own
> problems or learn to cooperate.)
>
>    
>>> Oh, and it's not another OS, just another distro. Choice is the
>>> main reason for the different distros, you know...
>>>        
>> Different distros are different OSes, but that is unimportant.
>>      
> The OS is GNU/Linux (in different versions), the distros just package
> and manage different additional software.
> You have a point, as distros are also in the habit of applying
> patches to the kernel, slightly changing the underlying OS. If you
> follow that line of thought, though, Windows with malware that
> patches its kernel is a different OS than Windows without that
> malware...
>
>    
>> If it is indeed a bug in Windows that is triggered by Ubuntu and
>> not by Mandriva,
>>      
> I still think this isn't in Windows per se, but rather some third-
> party driver. ;-)
>
>    
>> then it is still a valid feature request.
>> Considering that Ubuntu is designed to be installed alongside
>> Windows (the installer even does the nicety of setting up grub
>> for this) then it still might be considered a bug.
>>      
> One that will be pretty hard to find and fix, since the devs likely
> don't have access to Steve's hardware to debug this and since the
> only party able to get all the necessary info is MS/the soundcard
> driver developer...
>
> It's more of an interop problem than a bug, and those are a bitch to
> find and fix.
>
>    
>>>> Where would you like him to get the information from, if not
>>>> from the log messages?
>>>>          
>>> The scripts, by asking, by reading the other emails? Seriously,
>>> the log messages are more for developers and for giving you a
>>> clue where in the boot/shutdown procedure you currently are,
>>> not for telling you every little action that is taking place.
>>> That's why splash screens have become so popular (that and
>>> because the average user is uncomfortable being confronted with
>>> too much info).
>>>        
>> Here I disagree. The logs _are_ telling his exactly what is
>> happening, so why should he go bug the devs about it?
>>      
> Since I'm unwilling to shut down unless there is a kernel update,
> I've looked through the scripts, and what don't you know, they
> actually *do* mention killing all programs... :-P
> /etc/init.d/killprocs (slightly adapted to my max line length):
> do_start () {
>          # Kill all processes.
>          log_action_begin_msg \
>              "Asking all remaining processes to terminate"
>          killall5 -15 # SIGTERM
>          log_action_end_msg 0
>          alldead=""
>          for seq in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10; do
>                  # use SIGCONT/signal 18 to check if there are
>                  # processes left.  No need to check the exit code
>                  # value, because either killall5 work and it make
>                  # sense to wait for processes to die, or it fail and
>                  # there is nothing to wait for.
>
>                  if killall5 -18 ; then
>                      :
>                  else
>                      alldead=1
>                      break
>                  fi
>
>                  sleep 1
>          done
>          if [ -z "$alldead" ] ; then
>              log_action_begin_msg "Killing all remaining processes"
>              killall5 -9 # SIGKILL
>              log_action_end_msg 1
>          else
>              log_action_begin_msg \
>                  "All processes ended within $seq seconds."
>              log_action_end_msg 0
>          fi
> }
>
> Note how all those "log_action_begin_msg" commands log what is going
> on in greater detail than most init scripts do.
>
>    
I looked at the /etc/rc6.d/S20sendsigs which are the scripts that get 
processed at shutdown. This script is very similar to what you have 
listed above, but as far as I can see it is issuing invalid killall5 
commands that are invalid.

I use a Soundblaster Audigy LE sound card for which there is no driver 
in Win 7, and the Win 7 driver from the vendor that supposedly supports 
all versions of the Audigy card up to the current Soundblaster Audigy 4 
does not work with the card either (it says there is no supported 
hardware when you try to install it), so I am using the Win XP drivers 
supplied with the card which work fine. As I understand it the driver 
will ask the hardware what it is and what features it supports. So if 
apps are being shutdown properly then it seems to me that the Ubuntu 
driver is configuring the hardware as a device that the windows driver 
doesn't support.

regards,
Steve

>> But this is
>> another stupid thing for us to argue about and distracts from the
>> issue at hand.
>>      
> I think going *slightly* OT adds value to threads and doesn't
> distract from the main thread too much. I, at least, often learn a
> lot from these digressions. ;-)
>
>    --Reinhold
>
>    
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