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. -- Timothy Murphy e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366 s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland