In article <200008270430.AAA11118@dragon.tools.gtei.net>,
James Chacon <jchacon@genuity.net> wrote:
> >
> >On Thu, Aug 24, 2000 at 10:39:16AM -0700, Brian Buhrow wrote:
> >
> > > 	Why not just modify /etc/fstab such that the entry for
> > > the root filesystem is corrupted slightly.  this will cause it to panic on
> > > mountroot, which should be a good test.  Then, boot off a floppy, mount the
> > > root, modify /etc/fstab to be correct, and you're off and running again.
> >
> >No, that won't cause it to fail.  The initial mountroot is done by the
> >kernel.
> >
> >You could always remove init, I suppose.  Or kill -9 it.
> 
> An accidental kill -9 of any user process shouldn't cause a system panic.
> There's already code sprinkled throughout the kernel to treat init special
> so why not make it immune to this as well?

Please don't make this change. If the user wants to panic the machine as
root, there are many other ways she/he can accomplice that.

christos