FS#13769 - [procps] magic-sysrq key disabled by default
Attached to Project:
Arch Linux
Opened by Xavier (shining) - Thursday, 12 March 2009, 12:06 GMT
Last edited by Eric Belanger (Snowman) - Thursday, 12 March 2009, 20:54 GMT
Opened by Xavier (shining) - Thursday, 12 March 2009, 12:06 GMT
Last edited by Eric Belanger (Snowman) - Thursday, 12 March 2009, 20:54 GMT
|
Details
$ grep sysrq /etc/sysctl.conf
# Disable the magic-sysrq key kernel.sysrq = 0 This setting in arch has apparently been there since sysctl.conf was introduced, 3,5 years ago : http://repos.archlinux.org/viewvc.cgi/core/base/procps/sysctl.conf?root=core&view=log Is it needed to change the default behavior (sysrq enabled)? What this made for security concerns? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key#Security_Concerns If that's the case, could this aspect be mentioned at least in sysctl.conf : # Disable the magic-sysrq key for security reasons kernel.sysrq = 0 Of course, the need of this key is not usual, but over the past three years, I am sure I had several times a need for it, and probably it never worked because of this setting, and I just never realized that. I thought the kernel was too badly locked for this key to even work, or something like that. |
This task depends upon
I opened it after reading this thread and making this post :
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=514200#p514200
All other users from that thread seem to be fine with that default behavior, since it's easy to change. Same for several people on IRC.
dhave made a good point that the most important is to have this feature built in the kernel, so that the user can easily switch it on or off.
Anyway it still puzzled me that this nice feature was disabled by default, but I won't complain if this FR is rejected.