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From: tar@math.ksu.edu (Tim Ramsey)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.unix.internals,comp.unix.programmer,alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: How do you make your UNIX crash ???
Message-ID: <1991Mar13.031949.858@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu>
Date: 13 Mar 91 03:19:49 GMT
References: <690@tndsyd.oz.au> <513@bria>
Sender: news@maverick.ksu.ksu.edu (The News Guru)
Followup-To: alt.folklore.computers
Organization: Kansas State University
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[ diverging a bit, so I added alt.folklore.computers to the Newsgroups: and
  Followup-To: ]

In article <513@bria>:

>In an article, tndsyd.oz.au!berny (Berny Goodheart) writes:
>>I am interested in finding out known ways to make your version of UNIX
>>crash.

>	time(&now);
>	if ( (fd = open("/dev/kmem",O_RDWR)) == -1 )
>		return(1);
>	while ( write(fd,&now,sizeof(long)) == sizeof(long) )
>		;

A couple of years ago in an extreme fit of boredom, on an unused ATT 3B2/400
running SysV 3.1, I did the following:

  hack# yes > /dev/kmem

(where yes just writes a stream of "y\n" to stdout)

Nothing happened.  I let it run for a couple of minutes with no apparent
effect.  Perhaps the writes weren't moving the seek pointer in kmem, so it
wasn't writing over anything interesting.  I wasn't energetic enough to
find out.  All in all, it didn't help my boredom. :)

--
Tim Ramsey (tar@math.ksu.edu)  (913) 532-6750 (voice)  (913) 532-7004 (FAX)
Department of Mathematics, Kansas State University, Manhattan KS 66506-2602