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Comment by pishpash | Hacker News Reader

A proper button to trigger the 'shut-down' sequence would be better.

From an embedded perspective, it's ridiculous to expect that a computer will be harmed when simply pulling its power. The phenomenon is due entirely to shoddy engineering/programming that pays no attention to transactions. Babying systems just encourages it to continue.

Rather than superstitious behavior, we need cheap test jigs that can (for example) validate newly-purchased SD cards so that defective ones can be immediately returned.

Actually, from an embedded perspective, almost all SD cards do not guarantee that they don't corrupt when you kill power during a write. This is because of the internal workings of SD cards and completely unrelated to shoddy engineering/programming.

Those "internal workings" you refer to are the shoddy softwares on the SD card controller! It's certainly possible to implement transactions on flash.

You can't rely on users to actually do this every time. The more robust you make your system the better.

On the contrary, a sudden power loss is an exceptional case. Not having a button is just Raspberry Pi's (generally poor) hardware design decision, along with countless others relating to the power system and usability. Making your system entirely read-only _for this particular purpose_ is a hack, not a solution.

Of course it's a solution. It solve (among other things) the problem of unexpected power loss. You can't design your system for the happy path and hope for the best.

Do you turn off your computer by pulling the plug? Anyway, I was just reminded of 90's. The times before ATX.

Of course not. Because my OS isn't specifically designed for that. If it was (like my router): Of course.

Actually, this is not a poor hardware design decision. It makes sense for certain systems to have a power buttons, other systems don't generally use one (e.g. routers). Power down strategy is left as an implementation for the user. Read-only systems have many advantages and I wouldn't consider them a "hack".

You can't, but it's useful nevertheless. I have several Orange Pi's running as servers for various things, having HDD connected over USB, etc. I'm very glad it has a micro switch that can initiate a proper shutdown of the system.

I certainly wouldn't want to just unplug them from power.

it's actually relatively easy to add yourself:

https://gilyes.com/pi-shutdown-button/

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