Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2007 17:51:38 -0600
From: Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
To: devzero@web.de
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: System reboot triggered by just reading a device file....!?
Message-ID: <20071120235138.GE17536@waste.org>
References: <2097505946@web.de>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <2097505946@web.de>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11)
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 990
Lines: 27

On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 12:06:57AM +0100, devzero@web.de wrote:
> - be root

That's your first mistake.

> -  cat /dev/watchdog or dd if=/dev/watchdog of=/dev/zero bs=1 count=1 or .....
> -  wait one minute........
> 
> *reboot*!

And that's the defined behavior of /dev/watchdog, yes. Many years too
late to change it.

> i have heard 2 opinions for now (contacted the author and also discussed on wine-devel ) that this should be expected behaviour.
> 
> being sysadmin quite a while, i cannot believe that (accidentally) reading a device file (being root or not - what does that matter) triggers a system reboot.

If /dev/watchdog can be opened by non-root, that's an installation
error.

-- 
Mathematics is the supreme nostalgia of our time.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/