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From: arne@hpserv1.uit.no (Arne Helme)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: I crashed our MIPS machine today
Message-ID: <1990Aug10.155458.2237@hod.uit.no>
Date: 10 Aug 90 15:54:58 GMT
Sender: news@hod.uit.no (USENET News System)
Organization: University of Tromsoe, Norway
Lines: 19

Yesterday i saw a program on comp.lang.c that claimed that it could
crash certain RISC architectures from user mode. I tried it on our
decsystem 5200 running Ultrix V3.1A and on a sun 4 SPARC station
running sunOS4.03c. Both machines crashed.

The program was quite simple. It allocated a chunk of memory and
filled it with garbage. Then it tried to execute this garbage as
instructions. 

I thought this should be impossible! Would anyone out there like
to comment the strange behaviour I have observed on our machines?

-- Arne Helme

--
//// Arne Helme, science assistant// Email: arne@sfd.uit.no                  /
/// Computer Science Department  // "Going on means going far. Going far    //
// University of Tromsoe        //    means returning." (Tao Te Ching)     ///
/ N-9000 Tromsoe, NORWAY       // Phone: +47 83 44035                     ////