Hardening against sudden power loss 2

[LawnBoy]

I've got some kiosks in some shuttle busses. Problem is the bus drivers (who give me zero cooperation) simply turn off power to the bus at the end of their shift (thereby killing the pc), resulting in disk corruption due to disk write cacheing.

I'm currently running proprietary software on DOS 6.22 to avoid this situation. I'd like to change the system to web-based and use linux running a browser for the busses.

Any advice as to the best filesystem for this task? How about settings to disable disk write cacheing on that fs?

 

[Trevoke]

It's still very experimental, but I have had very, very good result with abrupt interruptions on reiser4. It does atomic changes, so it's either done, or not done, and never in-between, so no corruption. (and I have no idea what that means, I'm not that low-level yet)

Other than that.. I don't know, use smart UPS' who'll softly shutdown the system and then shut themselves down, if that exists?

-Haben sie fosforos?
-No tiengo caballero, but I have un briquet.

 

[LawnBoy]

UPSs are out. I have yet to find one that's 12vdc in and 12vdc out, much less handle the heat, dust, vibration, etc. The "speed bumps" these busses drive over all day every day are a killer.

BTW, I'm using laptop motherboards on shock mounts with solid-state disk drives.

I've tried various hardware solutions and all of them create more problems than they solve. Believe me, using DOS 6.22 was an act of desperation.

I'll read up on reiser4, thx for the tip.

 

[LawnBoy]

OK, I've rethought some of this. If the only app linux was running was, say, Mozilla, how much danger of corruption would I really face? Browser history is irrelevant, and there are no cookies.

I would need disk, video, and nic services, and X. Could this be done on a read-only filesystem?

 

[pansophic]

If you are truly running just a Kiosk, there is a KDE implementation of a Kiosk. Since KNOPPIX runs KDE by default, you may just want to use that with the KDE Kiosk implementation.

No disk writes except to RAM disk.


pansophic

 

[pentode]

If your computer can survive the environmnent, a UPS certainly can. But,if all you need is 12 vdc in/out, you don't even need a UPS - just a battery and a signal to tell your computer to shutdown.

A small 12V gel-cell battery would seem to be a fairly simple solution. The nominal 12V power you get from the bus will keep the battery charged while the bus is running. If you add a small relay on the power input from the bus, it can tell the computer when the power goes off to allow you to shutdown.

 

[Trevoke]

Very true; and if shutting down still takes too long, you can just use Suspend to Disk.

-Haben sie fosforos?
-No tiengo caballero, but I have un briquet.

 

[LawnBoy]

Pentode,
Been there, done that. Your assertion that a ups can handle anything a ruggedized motherboard can is, well, naiive. No offence intended.

Relays chatter (and tend to signal shutdowns over the tiniest of things like the headlights or heaters or wheelchair lifts being turned on), gel cells shake apart; after several years of trying I have given up on hardware solutions.