I couldn’t find an answer to this online with relation to qubes, so I’ll ask here.
Are there any precautions that should be taken before or after dirty shutdowns of a computer running Qubes, to minimize any damage/corruption that could occur? Also, what’s the worst that actually can happen in Qubes due to a hard shutdown, beyond just losing work done on an open document or VM?
In an ideal world, dirty shutdowns should never happen, but they still occasionally do (e.g. a sudden loss of power). As such, I want to be prepared for such a situation. (And yes, yes, I still do backups. I just don’t want to bother with having to reinstall the entire OS again if a simple precaution would’ve prevented the damage to begin with)
I admit, it was a bit dumb of me to have asked the second question, which the post I linked partially answers:
However, I still haven’t gotten a good answer to my main question, that being:
What precautions should be taken before or after dirty shutdowns to minimize damage or data corruption?
To clarify, I’m looking for a comprehensive and technical answer on the matter. One that maybe explains some common points of failure in the OS when a hard-shutdown occurs, and what can be done to mitigate or prepare for these things. My question still stands.
The worst thing that could happen is what you stated here:
It can and it does happens a lot. There’s not really a good way to do damage control after it happens but to always prepare for it is smart. also carrying a usb stick if everything goes south.
Maintaining a steady power supply is a good suggestion.
One of the perks I’ve noticed of having switched from a desktop to a laptop is that I don’t have to rely on the wall power anymore, which has brief power outages from time to time in my area. They’re long enough to force a hard-shutdown on my desktops, but with a laptop, the battery power could keep me working for another few hours if I had to, more than enough time to close everything and do a proper shutdown.