4 ms·

Crash-Only Software

47 points by raganwald 17y ago

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
See also this article on the topic: Crash-only software: More than meets the eye by Valerie Aurora http://lwn.net/Articles/191059/ http://lwn.net/Articles/191059/
- gtani 17y ago
  these too, http://mazenharake.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/let-it-crash-the-right-way/ http://mazenharake.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/let-it-crash-the... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash-only_software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash-only_software
raganwald 17y ago
It seemed like a good time to raise this again in light of the Mobile Multitasking discussion. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264119 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264119
callahad 17y ago
Apple added a per-process "crash to shutdown more quickly" flag in Snow Leopard: To support improved shutdown, your application needs to mark itself as “dirty” or “clean,” depending on whether it has unsaved changes and needs to do work before quitting, or can be terminated without further notice. When the system shuts down, clean applications are terminated (via SIGKILL) without further interaction. http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/releasenotes/MacOSX/WhatsNewInOSX/Articles/MacOSX10_6.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008898-SW22 http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/releasenotes/MacOSX/W...
- chaosmachine 17y ago
  Wow, thank you so much. I have this application (uTorrent) that keeps aborting system reboots because it tries to gracefully close hundreds of connections and lags out. I just added "NSSupportsSuddenTermination" to the plist file, and now it shuts down instantly. No more cancelled reboots!
- rbritton 17y ago
  In practice this works really, really well. I've used it quite a bit in my own internal stuff, but I'd love to see a wider adoption among other developers -- there currently aren't many applications with this support built in (including Apple's own). The dirty/clean marking mechanism is pretty simple; as long as the number of dirty calls equal the number of clean calls, it's considered safe to kill.
jchrisa 17y ago
This paper was one of the main inspirations behind the CouchDB design.

47 points by raganwald 17y ago

See also this article on the topic: Crash-only software: More than meets the eye by Valerie Aurora http://lwn.net/Articles/191059/ http://lwn.net/Articles/191059/

gtani 17y ago
these too, http://mazenharake.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/let-it-crash-the-right-way/ http://mazenharake.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/let-it-crash-the... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash-only_software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash-only_software

raganwald 17y ago

It seemed like a good time to raise this again in light of the Mobile Multitasking discussion. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264119 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1264119

callahad 17y ago

Apple added a per-process "crash to shutdown more quickly" flag in Snow Leopard: To support improved shutdown, your application needs to mark itself as “dirty” or “clean,” depending on whether it has unsaved changes and needs to do work before quitting, or can be terminated without further notice. When the system shuts down, clean applications are terminated (via SIGKILL) without further interaction. http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/releasenotes/MacOSX/WhatsNewInOSX/Articles/MacOSX10_6.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40008898-SW22 http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/releasenotes/MacOSX/W...

chaosmachine 17y ago
Wow, thank you so much. I have this application (uTorrent) that keeps aborting system reboots because it tries to gracefully close hundreds of connections and lags out. I just added "NSSupportsSuddenTermination" to the plist file, and now it shuts down instantly. No more cancelled reboots!
rbritton 17y ago
In practice this works really, really well. I've used it quite a bit in my own internal stuff, but I'd love to see a wider adoption among other developers -- there currently aren't many applications with this support built in (including Apple's own). The dirty/clean marking mechanism is pretty simple; as long as the number of dirty calls equal the number of clean calls, it's considered safe to kill.

jchrisa 17y ago

This paper was one of the main inspirations behind the CouchDB design.