Hi,
Computers need restarts in various scenarios like software upgrades,
regaining leaked memory, system slowdown/hang etc etc. We typically postpone
computer restarts for reasons like "loss of active state". For example, a
user may have opened some applications at the moment & a restart means
interrupting them, remembering all of them & their context, re-starting them
& restoring their context again after restart.
In some cases (eg: software upgrades), it looks possible to
provide"context-restoring" computer restarts. "Context-restoring" means
- remembering the applications that are active before restart & starting
them after restart without user's actions.
- Applications to remember the context & fit into this context to the
extent possible after restart without user's actions. Examples
- If a user had five sites opened in firefox, we should have firefox
remember these websites & re-open them after restart.
- If a user had a compilation going on before restart, we should have
the application checkpoint this activity before restart & resume this
compilation after restart.
This email is to understand
- whether such a facility is already existing in Belenix or any other OS
& whether any application have such support. If not,
- Prior art on "context-restoring" computer restarts.
- Useful & undesirable what kind of scenarios "context-restoring"
computer restarts would be useful & what scenarios they are
undesirable. An
example of undesirable scenario: if we observe a system hang by
opening some
web page, "context-restoring" restart would result in a hang.
Does it help
if we let user choose the applications for which "context" should be
restored.
- Implementation possibilities. One implementation possibility: when user
requests "context-restoring" restart, applications can save their context
that is appropriate across restarts & register with some module
in Operating
system which can invoke these registered applications on restart.
As middleware like operating systems have a role to play in supporting this
feature, the email is posted here. If this is not the correct alias for such
a discussion, please ignore this thread & point me to appropriate discussion
list.
Thanks,
Babu
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