This happend to me right noww as I tried to write a gui task manager for the GNU/Linux OS
My first programming related memory is of the QBasic interpreter.
I had written some code I was quite happy with, but not saved it yet. As part of a subroutine for sound output, I quickly wrote a loop from 20 to 20000 to output a test signal over 1 second each with that frequency via the PC speaker and hit execute.
Realizing my mistake, It being MS-DOS and thus single-threaded, I couldn’t Ctrl+C out of it without killing QBasic altogether and losing my code. I couldn’t turn town the PC speaker.
I ended up closing various doors between the PC and me and waiting it out.
Try it again
Do you know the definition of insanity?
Do you know the definition of insanity?
do you know software developers?
What’s really insane is that sometimes the second identical test actually works.
How are you crashing your system?! Crashing program sure, but the entire system?
rm -rf <some placeholder>
Works for
.
current directory. Yay!… also works for
/
system root. 🔥 Nay!Does it? I thought / specifically was protected, and you needed to add --no-preserve-root.
Try it out on your own system.
:(){ :|:& };:
It’s totally possible
Doesn’t explain OPs task management example. And won’t crash the kernel, just make things unresponsive
it didn’t crash the kernel, it just killed every process that isn’t run by the root user, which kind of feels like a crash