Re: Speaking of SysRQ...

Riley Williams (rhw@bigfoot.com)
Wed, 10 Jun 1998 22:15:38 +0100 (BST)


Hi there.

>> Speaking of magic sysrq, is there any reason it's still in the
>> 'kernel hacking' section? IMHO it's a stable and extremely useful
>> feature.

> If you know it is there and when to (not) use it... ;)

> Imagine when your sister borrowed your console just to find out
> that when she leaned over the keyboard to adjust the screen
> settings, she hard rebooted the computer and with it her precious
> two days worth of work was lost.

Let me guess - somebody's been stupid with the key allocations to
invoke it - at least, they have if that can happen accidentally!!!

I like the idea of a magic backdoor that can shut the system down
properly when it gets its knickers in a twist, but NOT if it can be
invoked like that. It's precicely to avoid suchlike accidents that the
three-fingered salute uses the keys it does - the likelihood of that
particular combination being pressed by accident is particularly
low...

> It should probably be in an 'advanced user' section. You wouldn't
> want it on the machines on campus.

Better still would be to have it ask every application to quit and
save any work in progress first like WinDoze does, but that's probably
asking too much...

Best wishes from Riley.

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