I have a computer (a Raspberry Pi, but I believe this is irrelevant for the question) running Linux. That computer runs without a disk, meaning it boots using PXE and gets a root partition hosted on an NFS server. That root partition is mounted in synchronous mode, and in normal operation nothing gets written to any system files (let’s say just in user home directories).
Now I would like to remotely turn this computer on and off. It is powered via PoE, so I could just tell the switch to turn power on the respective port off (and obviously, without power, the pi would be off).
If the pi was using an SD card, I would be very hesitant about doing that, and find a way to tell it in advance to properly shut down, and then turn it off after a reasonable time.
However, in this environment, I feel it is safe to just take away the power and don’t bother about shutting down. As I understand it, the worst that can happen that a file that’s currently being written doesn’t get written. Am I right about that? Or is there any risk when not doing a regular shutdown?
