Re: vlock + magic SysRQ key

From: Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov (D.Yu.Bolkhovityanovat_private)
Date: Mon Aug 09 1999 - 22:07:25 PDT

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    On  1 Jan 90 at 5:00, pavelat_private wrote:
    
    [snip]
    > Magic SysRq is in "kernel hacking" section. If you enable it, and you
    > are not kernel hacker, you loose. (If you are kernel hacker, you
    > certainly don't want mere mortals access your console, do you?
    >
    > Read help entry:
    >
    > CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ
    >   If you say Y here, you will have some control over the system even
    >   if the system crashes for example during kernel debugging (e.g., you
    >   will be able to flush the buffer cache to disk, reboot the system
    >   immediately or dump some status information). This is accomplished
    >   by pressing various keys while holding SysRq (Alt+PrintScreen). The
    >   keys are documented in Documentation/sysrq.txt. Don't say Y unless
    >                                                   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    >   you really know what this hack does.
    >   !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    >
    > If you did not realize it allows people to bypass vlock -a, you did
    > not know what it does, and you should not have enabled it :-).
    
        CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ is enabled by default in the 2.2.5 kernel which is
    shipped with RedHat-6.0:
    
    viper:/usr/src/linux-2.2.5% grep SYSRQ arch/i386/defconfig .config
    arch/i386/defconfig:CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ=y
    .config:CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ=y
    viper:/usr/src/linux-2.2.5% uname -a
    Linux some.inet.address 2.2.5-15 #1 Mon Apr 19 22:21:09 EDT 1999 i586 unknown
    
        In 2.2.5-22 kernel (the last version in updates/) arch/i386/defconfig has
    CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ also enabled.
    
       The most interesting is that standard kernel distribution
    (linux-2.2.5.tar.gz) doesn't have SYSRQ enabled -- it was set to "y" by
    RedHat (probably during beta-testing), and is "y" for all architectures.
    
        So, those who use RedHat don't even have to say "Y" and decide if they
    are hackers or not -- the decision was made for them beforehand ;-).
           ___________________________________________________________________
           Dmitry Yu. Bolkhovityanov  |  Novosibirsk, RUSSIA
           phone (383-2)-39-49-56     |  The Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics
                                      |  Lab. 5-13
    



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