Best way to do a fast but non-harmful shutdown?
 

I'm running 3 independent desktops (not networked), with a rather low-end battery backup. Line power failures aren't unusual, so I'm trying to figure out the best way to do a prompt shutdown at minimal stress to the machines. Given three choices, which do you consider preferable:

1. sudo shutdown now -h -P
2. 4-finger salute: Ctrl-Alt-SysRq-o
3. Hold power button 5 seconds

Or are they all about the same? TIA for any comments and suggestions!

You can have acpid running and installed. When you push the power button on the box it triggers option number one.

Number 3 is not advised if you're not on a journaled filesystem. And not without risk if you are. Doing fsck on a 1TB ext2 filesystem could take quite a chunk of time on the next boot.

Might be a way to change how disk caching is being used so that the #3 option isn't so bad.

We've pulled the plug on QNX and dos for decades without an issue.

Thank you, Shadow 7! It turns out the man page for acpid has this very thing as a how-to example. I have marked the thread as solved.