On Tue, Jan 18, 2000 at 03:55:08AM -0600, Frederick Bruckman wrote:

   > I understood that the "boss" in question didn't even have an account
   > (the question was how to reboot at the _login_ prompt). I imagine this
   > to be an office-type environment, as opposed to a computing shop.

   That's correct.  Although I could give my boss a login, and it appears
   that this might be the only solution, it seems a kludge, especially
   since other PC unixes (oh, linux for instance,) have no problem with
   accepting a three-finger salute to shut the machine down, configurable,
   of course...

   There's already hooks to get into ddb and shift virtual consoles -- why
   not reboot the machine?  (or run arbitrary programs?)

Wouldn't that be a serious security problem.  I'm not sure I want
anyone with physical access to a machine to be able to reboot it into
single user mode or run arbitrary programs!  

Furthermore, it complete negates the possiblity of actually using the
machine for anything other than processes with a short lifetime
started on the console.  I couldn't rely on the presence of another
machine on the net for long enough to run anything substantial on, for
example, if it could be rebooted at any moment at any whim.

Perhaps I'm missing why it is such a great idea for random people to
be able to arbitrarily reboot a machine.

Cheers,
Brook