I will elaborate;
unRaw:
Harmful use: Nothing harmful.
Use: X servers sometimes crash, etc.
saK:
Harmful use: You can kill some programs on a certain VT.
Use: Programs sometimes on a VT sometimes won't die.
Boot:
Harmful use: You can reset the system. If you have access to the console,
there's a good chance you can do this anyhow.
Use: Not too much use since you can reset other ways.
Off:
Harmful use: Same as boot. Not likely to work on anything but a laptop.
Use: Same as reset.
Sync:
Harmful use: Nothing harmful you can do with this.
Use: Sometimes the system can crash and be in a state where this still
will work.
Unmount:
Harmful use: You can screw up the system a bit. Maybe kill programs when
they try to write to the disk.
Use: Save a crashed system, ensure no fsck on boot.
showPc:
Harmful use: Nothing harmful you can do with this.
Use: Debugging.
showTasks:
Harmful use: Same as showPc.
Use: Same as showPc.
showMem:
Harmful use: Same as showTasks.
Use: Same as showTasks.
loglevel0-8:
Harmful use: Nothing harmful you can do with this.
Use: Prevent the console from being flooded by kernel messages.
tErm:
Harmful use: Probably about the same as rebooting.
Use: Forkbomb countermeasure?
kIll:
Harmful use: Probably about the same as rebooting.
Use: Forkbomb countermeasure?
killalL:
Harmful use: Basically halts the system.
Use: I don't see what it could be useful for.
=========================================================================
Do you see how some/most of these could be useful even on a production system,
or public terminals of some sort even.
Note: Perhaps you could flood the logs with some of the debug stuff, but
someone would have to have a serious amount of time for this to be
at all successful. Another thought; someone with actual access to the
console probably has the ability to do pretty much the same harmful
stuff to the system as sysrq could.
-Myrdraal
-- Linux jackalz 2.1.107 #76 Thu Jun 25 07:10:43 EDT 1998 i486 1:48pm up 6:03, 16 users, load average: 0.44, 0.34, 0.37- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu