[TUHS] hello, world

Sven Mascheck mascheck at in-ulm.de
Wed Dec 28 10:13:54 AEST 2011


Michael Davidson wrote:
> --- On Mon, 12/26/11, Warren Toomey <wkt at tuhs.org> wrote:
>  A question though: what command would "bring the system down"?
> 
> Well, if you are logged in as root the possibilities are almost endless, [...]

Sure.  I was just tempted to exaggerate this discussion with:
"init 0, halt or shutdown".  But such commands had no been
implemented even in 7th ed, yet :)

I wonder if Warren rather had different issues in mind,
which would lead to "unexpected" downs. The previously
mentioned resource problems probably match this--not too
suprisingly, because I always had the impression that Unix
aimed at protecting processes from each other, not users.

I'd like to remind of an according, earlier, quite fitting
discussion from DMR:

In "The UNIX Time-sharing System--A Retrospective"
the paragraph "Security"
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/retro.html

-Sven



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