6386 shutdown: I CAN'T BELIEVE at&t was really this stupid!

[Karl Botts]

In article <14401 at bfmny0.UUCP> tneff at bfmny0.UUCP (Tom Neff) writes:
>If you think about it for a second, by the time UNIX is totally ready
>to be "rebooted now," you shouldn't have an active file system to
>read scripts from.  The kernel is ALL THAT'S LEFT.  So the message
>has to go there.  (I suppose it could be linked in at rebuild time.)

This is simply not true; the root file system should be and is still mounted
at reboot time.  When a normal Unix system comes up, it comes up  by
default in single user mode and the root filesystem is already mounted.
You can read and write in the normal manner to the root filesystem, and
it is _your_ job to make sure it is synced before you reboot.  This is
the same state the system is in just before you reboot in the usual
shutdown script.
Incidentally, it is not possible for the reboot command itself (when it
is available as a sfotware command) to automatically sync the system,
because there are times when you _must_ reboot the system without
syncing, i.e., after rebuilding the free list with fsck.