Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 10 Jun 1998 09:51:50 +0800 (WST) | From | Matt Kemner <> | Subject | Re: Speaking of SysRQ... |
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On Tue, 9 Jun 1998 jam@ans.net wrote:
jam> I wouldn't want *any* way to change this at run-time-- once someone has jam> 'root' acceess to the machine, they can circumvent whatever they want. jam> jam> what kind of environment are you describing?
Think of a High School or University lab full of computers, or something like a public library terminal. The physical computers are locked in a cabinet with only the keyboard/mouse and monitor protruding, so the user cannot reset the machine or pull the power cord. The user does not have root access. (console access != root access). A simple sysctl/proc entry to enable/disable sysrq would be _very_ useful in this case. (the lab administrator could keep it disabled by default, but enable it when he's trying out a new kernel/installing a new X server/anythign that could put the computer in a position where he might want to use sysrq, by echo'ing 1 to the appropriate file in /proc, then disable it again after he's finished by echo'ing a 0)
My personal, private opinion is that sysrq should be configurable in config/menuconfig like it is now, defaulting to off, but requiring root to ALSO echo a 1 to a value in /proc to turn it on. (something along the lines of what you have to do to enable ip_forward etc)
Note that I personally don't NEED this option since nobody has physical access to my production servers, so I'd probably leave it enabled all the time anyway, but I can easily see where having it run-time configurable can be very useful for many people.
- Matt Kemner System Administrator Networx Internet Western Australia ++61 8 9345 3377
P.S. For those of you that are considering replying with "but what about control-alt-delete", check out the "ca" entry in your inittab, and make it run something other than shutdown. (eg ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/bin/echo "I don't think so, Tim.")
P.P.S I would code up a patch for this myself, but you _really_ don't want to see my C coding :P
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