Local DoS : RedHat 6.0

[jjd () QUEBIX NET (~jim)]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this problem has ever been addressed or not, but
considering that I just spent a day recovering from a corrupted root
partition (and this can be done by *any* user with window manager
access), I thought this might be worth mentioning anyway.

While killing yet another zombie Netscape process, I made the mistake of
typing "kill -9 -1 <pid>" as opposed to the normal "kill -9 <pid>."  For
obvious reasons, this attempted to kill every process owned by my user
and hung the entire system in the process.  (aka. I couldn't even switch
to another console to attempt recovery.)  Unfortunately the only way to
recover was to "hard boot" the system and run the risk of corrupting my
root partition in the process.  (Of course with my luck it corrupted.)

I actually noticed this "bug" about a year ago, but since forgot about
it.  From what I've experienced, it definitely happens when a user types
"kill -9 -1" while in RedHat 6.0's Gnome/Enlightenment or Afterstep,
however I haven't tested any other window managers or versions of Linux.

Thanks,
~jim

/*
 * F8 90 B5 26 2E 4C FD 9E  CC BC 59 F1 85 3F F7 CB  BF 3B 5B 3C
 * "/usr/games/fortune: Open failed. Lid stuck on cookie jar."
 */