[ubuntu-uk] Does a hard shutdown actually damage anything?

[Glen Mehn]

  when you do the power pull, you could have data corruption for 
anything that's not written to the filesystem (the details of this are 
a) very boring and b) vary by filesystem.

To avoid problems, stop (or kill) all running programs, and do:

sudo halt
or
sudo shutdown -h now
(which is what the poweroff button calls in any case)

It's not the end of the world, but I have had wedged systems with 
unkillable files and whatnot before. Typically, you can reinstall the 
affected applications if you know what they are.

Best,

Glen

On 03/09/10 09:50, Rowan Berkeley wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Once again I lost my shutdown function; not only did shutdown vanish
> from my main menu, but when I added the Session Indicator Applet to the
> panel, the shutdown option on this did not work either; only the user
> switcher option worked. Therefore, I had to shutdown by pressing and
> holding the power button. This being the second time this has happened,
> I should like to know, what are the dangers of doing a hard shutdown?
>
> Thanks,
> Rowan
>
>

-- 
Glen Mehn
glen.mehn at oba.co.uk
skype: glenmehn | blog: http://glen.mehn.net/mba
UK: +44(0)7942 675 755 | US: +1 415 704 4737