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UNIX Process Cryogenics?

Posted by Cliff on from the if-laptops-can-do-it... dept.

shawarma asks: "Due to a recent power outage, I've had to shut down a server running a process that had been running for ages calculating something. The job it was doing would have been done in a few days, I think, but I had to shut it down before the UPS ran out of juice. This got me thinking: Why can't I freeze down the process and thaw it back up at a later time? It ought to be possible to take all the connected memory pages and save them in some way, preserve file handles and pointers, and everything. Maybe net-connections would die, but that's understandable. Has any work been done in this field? If not, shouldn't there be? I'd like to contribute in some way, but I think it's a bit over my head.." Laptops have been doing this in some form for years: most laptops, when they run out of power, or when told by the user will go into "suspend" mode which is similar to what the poster is describing, however outside of laptops, I haven't seen this done. Sleeping processes also do something similar, sending their memory pages into swap so other running processes can use the memory. What, if anything, is preventing someone from taking this a step further?

11 of 555 comments (clear)

  1. Not recommended by iiii · · Score: 1, Funny

    I think that would exceed the recommended operating temperatures for your hardware. But on the up side, we might see the head (?) of your box on Futurama.. ;-)

    --
    Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
  2. Re:Use Windows XP by Ewan · · Score: 2, Funny

    The difference is that suspending a laptop is done using hardware, but the suspend mode in WindowsXP is done in software, so desktop PCs can do it without additional functionality.

    Ewan

  3. hhgttg by Score0,+Overrated · · Score: 3, Funny

    The job it was doing would have been done in a few days,

    In that case, Arthur Dent should know the answer.

  4. it's encrypted in your brain waves! by spacefem · · Score: 5, Funny

    I once had an enourmous computer working out a very important question but it was destroyed by Volgons five minutes before it was finished. I feel your pain.

    --

    spacefem.com
  5. I took a quick look... by eXtro · · Score: 2, Funny
    through my engineering library and I found a similar situation. A massive computer system, completely one of a kind, was destroyed prior to providing the solution to the problem for which it was designed. Recalculating the solution from scratch would take far too long, but there was one possibility. One of its computational units was still intact and the answer was surmised to be embedded deep within its memory.


    I think the same solution would apply here: Find Arthur Dent.

    --

    Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware

  6. Re:emacs does it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    yea, well Vi has done it for 10's of years. :)

  7. Re:Windows 2000 and Hibernation by Joe+U · · Score: 2, Funny

    Creative releasing drivers that cause a bluescreen?

    Who would of thought it was possible.

    Rule 1 with hibernation, no creative products.

  8. You sure of that? by bastion_xx · · Score: 4, Funny

    My Intel processor puts it somewhere around 41.99999999967

  9. Doesn't matter... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    The answer would have been 42 once the processing was complete. So who cares? Get a bigger UPS :-)

  10. Re:We do it in Condor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    The label "free as in beer" is misleading, due to the cultural differences between Wisconsin and other parts of the world.

    The people of Wisconsin are fat, stupid, drunken oafs. They consider themselves "America's Dairyland", although this title was taken from them many years ago by the state of California. This is not the only false claim to fame that the state keeps. Green Bay Packers fans consider their city to be "Titletown, U.S.A.", because of the numerous NFL championships the team has won. The numbers may seem impressive, but the majority of them were won when the NFL was a small league, and there was no playoff for the championship.

    Getting back to the fatness, they do produce and consume a lot of dairy, but this is not why they are called "cheeseheads". A little known fact is that most of Wisconsin's citizens are inbred, and even those that aren't inbred frequently suffer birth defects, due to maternal alcoholism. This results in a condition that produces small holes in the skull, where fluids escape and eventually congeal into small, yellow lumps, hence the term "cheesehead". Hence, the traditional Packer "cheesehead hat" is actually a symbol of Wisconsin's perseverance in the face of a world that looks down upon inbreeding.

    Getting to the point, Wisconsinites _crave_ beer to feed their alcoholism, so much so that beer is an extremely valuable commodity, despite the abundance of breweries throughout the state. In fact, the Leinenkugel's brewery of Chippewa Falls goes so far as to indicate the value of its beer on the label of their original lager -- "Leinie's Original" is "Good as Gold".

    So you see, we still haven't found an English word or phrase quite as good as "libre" -- "free as in beer" can be just as ambiguous as the word "free" is by itself.

  11. Uh huh... by global_diffusion · · Score: 2, Funny

    GNU Emacs basically does this to reduce initialization times.

    I heard about this. But, my dear boy, I do believe that VI does this better and with more cryptic keyboard commands.