Always power down

[Brian Beuken]

Small but important point, most of our systems don't have on off switches, so its not unusual to just yank the power cable out of them to switch them off. But that can cause issues, some obvious some not so.. Files which are open while the system is on, may not get closed properly and that can cause damage to them, when next you power up.

It can be subtle like things just not starting or severe like a failure to boot. Linux is pretty robust about things like this but its not immune to it, a damaged/unclosed file may get loaded, it may not, it may report the issue but chances are it will be hidden in a sea of text under your gui.

I have noted on a couple of occasions now that code I was compiling fine one evening refused to build or run the next day, these kind of issues can be very hard to track down, the assumption is naturally that you did something wrong in your code.

But, a new burn SD, restoring the libs or using a back up and things all work again. 


Its a pain and not always obvious, so just try to make a good habit of powering down before you pull the power cable out.