1

Is there a proper way to shut down the chip when changing batteries or moving device? Is it safe to pull the power or can that cause corruption?

2

I have never had an issue when just pulling power. You could use ssh to issue a shut down command.

3

IDEA: option on the menu for admin to shutdown gracefully

4

Yes that would be nice!
I also hesitate to just pull the power, you never know what it is doing at that time.
I do this:
ssh outernet@xx.xx.xx.xx
(password is outernet by default)
sudo halt
(type password again)

But a menu button (of course only available when logged on as outernet) would be nice.

5

Doesn’t sudo halt perform an immediate unclean shutdown? I have always been told to use sudo halt as an absolute last resort as it can cause data corruption almost like pulling the power. I always use sudo shutdown.

6

Negative. Check out its options…

Usage: halt [-d DELAY] [-n] [-f] [-w]

Halt the system

        -d SEC  Delay interval
        -n      Do not sync
        -f      Force (don't go through init)
        -w      Only write a wtmp record

Perfectly safe on this platform. However, other platforms may not map this command in the same way.

7

No, on Linux systems the “shutdown”, “reboot” and “halt” programs are just the same thing with
different defaults. shutdown by default sends messages to logged on users and waits a while for
giving them the opportunity to save their work and log off, but on something like an Outernet CHIP
(or another basically single-user system) that is pointless.