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I recently installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my system dual boot with XP . My computer teacher at school used to tell that if a linux system is shutdown repeatedly it corrupts. I wanted to know that does same thing happen when it is done in ubuntu. Thank you.

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  • i just want the answer yes or no that you can tell me
    – Sivakethan
    Aug 29, 2013 at 14:43
  • This is not the place for questions that require just "yes" or "no", just read the answers to the question Mitch mentioned.
    – guntbert
    Aug 29, 2013 at 17:14

4 Answers 4

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Either your teacher was mis-informed, or the comment was used in a different context than you remember. In a controlled shutdown, the chances of any type of damage or corruption is extremely small. It is during forced, hard shutdowns that the chance of damage occurs - usually to open files and to the disk directory structure. This is applicable to any OS, not just Linux-based systems.

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If it's a clean shutdown, thats is not correct. If you just cut the system of any power source, that might corrupt it depending on which filesystem you use.

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My kids shutdown Ubuntu by unplugging it about 50 time a day, and nothing happened so far. They also sometimes press the power button, to shut it down, and nothing so far.

No keep in mind that this be the case here, and doesn't mean that it safe all the time. From a professional point of view, eventually I will have to re-install, because the system is so corrupted, that's the only way to fix it.

As I'm typing this, one of them shutdown the laptop 5 times, by unplugging the cable, and Ubuntu just came back up, and she continued playing.

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    Repairing the filesystem is usually sufficient. Reinstallation is rarely necessary, even when a system regularly has its power cut. This is not to say that cutting power to a running Ubuntu system is good. Like on other OSes, it can cause data loss. This is probably more likely to harm your files than it is to harm the installed Ubuntu system. Of course, with sufficient backups, that's really no big deal either. Physical damage to hard disks can occasionally result, but even that is usually minor and bad blocks can be marked bad and no longer used (with fsck or badblocks). Aug 29, 2013 at 15:01
  • I'm guessing the laptop doesn't have a working battery. :) Aug 29, 2013 at 15:02
  • @EliahKagan I agree, but after doing a few of those, I had to re-install :)
    – Mitch
    Aug 29, 2013 at 15:02
  • @EliahKagan you guessed right, they killed it :)
    – Mitch
    Aug 29, 2013 at 15:03
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Ubuntus default file systems are robust so there is little chance of corruption. When that said you can be unlucky and have a corrupt file system after just one loss of power so don't use it as your prefferred method of shutting a system down.

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