Some damn good points IMHO.
> Recommendation: Minimally leave your systems on all the time, perhaps
> with a power saver mode on your monitor. I like to keep my desktops on
> a UPS, even, so that they are both well-protected against power surge
> and protected against the annoying 10-15 second power glitches that
> happen way too often in my neighborhood (especially during the summer
> and thunderstorms). Sure, this costs a few cents a day in extra power
> for a desktop, but if your system is in a cluster (especially if it is
> in a beowulf) it is probably in use all the time anyway.
>
> Don't Reboot Them: Why reboot? Linux (again, when properly installed
> and maintained) is awesomely stable. It won't crash, its performance
> won't degrade as memory doesn't leak, and as long as it's up it doesn't
> stop logging things, it remains network connected, and people can rely
> on the system being there and accessible. In most professional
> workstation LANs or clusters (running linux or some other Unix flavor)
> the systems get rebooted only when there is a real reason for it -- a
> kernel or major library or distribution upgrade, a (rare) system crash,
> after hardware maintenance. Users can then rely on these machines being
> accessible at the console or via the network 24x7x365 (or nearly so),
> and the system logs represent a continuous record of activity over this
> entire interval or whatever interval systems persons select as a
> monitoring window.
>
> This is opposed, of course, to WinXX; some (a few) WinXX system
> configurations are reported to be stable (if you don't use them too
> hard) but most folks report that they crash spontaneously anywhere from
> once or twice a day to at most once or twice a week, depending on usage.
> If using a system with a bad memory leak, it may even be therapeutic to
> reboot after running anything taxing just to ensure that a crash is less
> likely with the next process or task one undertakes.
>
> Recommendation: Bag Win NT altogether (I know, I'm sure that you can't
> and have some good reason for running it, but still...) and leave your
> systems running linux all the time. I would make a modest exception for
> laptops -- as a practical matter they get moved and rebooted and power
> cycled a lot, and have hardware and firmware to support the volatility.
> Even a laptop that doesn't actually get carried around I would leave
> "on" all the time -- my laptop will just shut itself down a major
> component at a time if it isn't actively running anything -- and most
> laptops have "suspend" modes that save their active state to either disk
> or memory and shut down all the way or part of the way.
>
> Note that DUAL (linux-smp, non-laptop) systems cannot use APC features
> in the kernel, but other desktop systems may be able to use power-saving
> features in the BIOS via the kernel when the systems are idle. Again, I
> wouldn't hesitate to use these features if you like although I
> personally don't mess with it.
>
> rgb
>
> Robert G. Brown http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
> Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
> Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
> Phone: 1-919-660-2567 Fax: 919-660-2525 email:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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