Rudi Ahlers wrote:
It seems to me that it should be possible to have a simple, torch-battery operated, system which will keep the machine alive long enough to make a graceful exit.
A UPS would be your simplest option here since the UPS can send a signal to the OS to shutdown properly.
Using a "torch battery" (I presume this is a large torch?) you'll still have the same issue as you have now - when the battery runs flat (i.e. power outage is longer than 10 minutes or so) Linux will still crash uncleanly.
As will be obvious, I know nothing in this area. My thought was just that the machine only requires say 30 seconds of life to shutdown properly, and I would have thought there was enough capacity in a large torch battery to supply this?
But there seems to be a 100% backing for UPS, so I'll look into that.