The Mouse That Roared: Killing A Sun Server During Lunch Break

Mar 05, 2009, 15:33 (4 Talkback[s])
(Other stories by Mike Tremell)

[ Thanks to Mike Golvach for this link. ]

"The end result was a machine that was completely unusable from the console, unreachable via telnet, ftp or ssh and, somehow managed not to panic and crash after about 1000 faults of every kind and color. We're confident it would have eventually gone down, but it was surprisingly robust (in that respect). If we have hours and hours to spend at some time in the future, we'll give the same test a shot and see if the machine just comes back to its senses over time (and how long that takes). Our bet is that it will (like most Unix and Linux OS's running on halfway decent hardware). Only time will tell.

"Following, a quick walkthrough of the experiment followed by the tiny little shell script (only run once) that caused all the damage. We called it tree, for some reason; perhaps because it reminded us of that old saying "If a tree falls in a forest, no one can hear you scream." ...damn! Got that one wrong, too! It's amazing what a few basic shell commands and a simple double-exec can do ;)"

Complete Story

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