13 hr. ago • 98%

Me working with the OS

This happend to me right noww as I tried to write a gui task manager for the GNU/Linux OS

17 comments

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.

2
This is why VM snapshotting is so valuable.

My IDE is my real workstation, and it hosts a VM in which I can plop some code, run it, crash, revert and try again.

17
Try it again

Do you know the definition of insanity?

26
- Do you know the definition of insanity?
  
  do you know software developers?
  
  34
How are you crashing your system?! Crashing program sure, but the entire system?

13
- Try it out on your own system.
  
  :(){ :|:& };:
  
  It's totally possible
  
  15
  
  Doesn't explain OPs task management example. And won't crash the kernel, just make things unresponsive
  
  7
- rm -rf <some placeholder>
  
  Works for . current directory. Yay!
  
  ... also works for / system root. 🔥 Nay!
  
  3
  
  Does it? I thought / specifically was protected, and you needed to add --no-preserve-root.
  
  2
  
  That won't crash your kernel, and I was more curious about the OPs example. Task management is basically reading some files, and sending signals, it should be near impossible to crash the system.
  
  1
- A high level explanation
  
  2
  
  OPs example was task management, which doesn't require kernel modules.
  
  3

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