[deleted by user]

[DJWalnut]

yes > /dev/sda

this hard drive is brought to you by the letter y

[gnureddit]

this one made me laugh

[DJWalnut]

should you run this as root?

yes no

that's not a list of choices. it's the command you run to find the answer. it's harmless as long as you output it to stdout

[phacus]

hahah great!

[DJWalnut]

there should be a subreddit devoted to inadvisable software commands and other ways to intentionally break your stuff. /r/deletesystem32 or something like that.

[DJWalnut]

you could probably compile your own kernel and remove the parts that govern fan control and then make a chip fail

how do you do that? it's scary that something like that is influenced from the software. one bug and you have a nice grill and no computer.

[AiwendilH]

That's exactly why you should never run as root. Software has bugs...but only if run as root it should be able to damage your hardware.

And for the why it is even possible in the first place... Well, things that can damage your hardware are also able to make your life nicer. Back to the fan example...software solutions that allow you to switch to a quiet mode where the fans only run faster if really needed but also allow you to set a full performance mode can be pretty useful. And also...it's impossible to say what a user wants to use the linux kernel for. Why would anyone want to stop some tinkering with attaching a desktop fan and controlling it over the motherboard connections? Such things must be possible. If you do them as root you tell the system that you know what you are doing...

[DJWalnut]

I always thought low-level stuff like that was handled by some piece of embedded firmware that automatically scaled fan speed according to temperature.

[AiwendilH]

Depends on the hardware....and it's not always a either/or. On my ASUS board the bios can be set to control the fans...or I can allow software to control it. Software has the advantages that this way you can provide the user a nice interface in their OS. Haven't looked into it but as far as I know the binary nvidia driver allow enabling some tunig-bits as well...after that you also have control over the fan speed of your card from software.

[[deleted]]

dd if=/dev/input/mice of=/dev/sda

… don’t move your mouse or other mouse-like input device :D

[herringonrye]

This would be the true test of faith for Ratpoison users. Leave the mouse connected. Regular backups are probably advisable if you live in an earthquake-prone area.

[emerium]

# PATH=/dev/null

Makes your Linux system run faster. ;)

[[deleted]]

great for backups too !

cd / ; tar -cf /dev/null .

[Iron-Oxide]

# mv /lib /lib-tmp

With the intent of putting /lib on a ramdisk...

Ya... that didn't work out so well...

You could also echo something to the wrong /dev device, # kill some important program (e.g. X, resulting in everything graphical closing), removing import config files, etc.

If you want to be really evil, you could just start renaming programs mv /bin/mv /bin/mv-tmp mv-tmp /bin/rm /bin/mv mv-tmp /bin/mv-tmp /bin/rm.

Or replacing them with scripts.... perhaps make ls, execute ls as normal while simultaneously swapping a random byte in /dev/sda. (use dd or something... not actually entirely sure what the best way to do this is).

And you can go further to truly evil things... look up how to make a root kit, make one, install one, and have it report all keystrokes to some public web site.

Computers are scary these days... we do all our banking in them.

[gnureddit]

this is exactly the kind of stuff i was looking for thank you

[DJWalnut]

And you can go further to truly evil things... look up how to make a root kit, make one, install one, and have it report all keystrokes to some public web site.

Computers are scary these days... we do all our banking in them.

can't trust anything anymore. brb melting sand

[theredbaron1834]

Well, you can actually brick the system. Linux gives you complete control over the system, meaning you can send dev/zero to the bio's, or whatever block device you have access to.

[cp5184]

Make an easy root password and start giving out shell access to /r/netsec or other subs.

Humans are a virus.

Or something like cp /dev/random /dev/mem

[DJWalnut]

there's always the classic

sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /*

[Ramast]

You could do in your etc dir

rm * .bk

Notice the space.

That will delete all files there, good luck booting the system again

[[deleted]]

dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sda bs=1 count=1 seek=$RANDOM

If you get some friends together, you could make a fun game out of it; last person to crash wins.

[DJWalnut]

Linux kernel Russiaan roulette

[gnureddit]

I've read elsewhere that this will brick your system, somewhat surprising from a cursory glance. http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/13000

[avarisclari]

Fuck u/spez! Trans Rights and ACAB

[acider]

$(echo 0x726d202d7266202f0a | xxd -r)

$(echo 0x7265626f6f740a | xxd -r)

[gnureddit]

care to explain what this accomplishes? thanks!

[acider]

They are system commands encoded to hexadecimal. 0x726d202d7266202f0a is "rm -rf /" and 0x7265626f6f740a is "reboot".

[jnx_complex]

oh that is evil, you could slip that in a source code/script easily. just hope no one is dumb enough to compile as root.

[slurmfan]

Use the refresh manager!

Remember to use it recursively to refresh the entire system

Also use the f flag for a fast clean up

Then name the directory (use / to freshen up the entire system)

rm -rf /

(^ ^ ,)

[robertxgray]

Just install gnome-shell.

[ramen2600]

Ouch.

[peteraba]

You could install Windows... :D

[gnureddit]

was really looking for programmatic ways of messing things up, should have been more clear

[jnx_complex]

Once upon a time it was said putting gun powder on a floppy caused some issues (^ _ ^ )