From: Tristan Wibberley <bloater@ps.cus.umist.ac.uk>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 12:39:55 +0000 (GMT)

Re: log of attempting to use vesafb with kgicon

On Sat, 13 Feb 1999, Robert Ennals wrote:

> Evan Martin wrote:
> > 
> 
> > This leads me to another question:
> > If I were trying to diagnose something that crashes often, how
> > should I run my system?  The e2fsck's after each lock take a very
> > long time (as a newbie, I set up one large partition).
> > Would running sync before each program help?
> > Would single user mode help?  (I tried this, but insmoding the KGI
> > driver makes the screen blank, and the only thing to fix it is to
> > switch to another console and back).
> 
> Compile your kernel to have magic sysreq key turned on. (in kernel
> hacking menu)
> 
> Then you can do alt-sysreq-U to unmount filesystems and alt-sysreq-R to
> reboot the machine.

Don't you need to sync first?

> I personally think that this option should be on by default, but for
> some strange reason it isn't so you have to turn it on yourself.

Because anyone at the console can to damage to your system. It is a
debugging feature, though I would like to see it change and become a
permanent fixture.

Imagine that you can switch VC's using SysRq, no matter what. But then you
might affect the running program using alt in alt-SysRq. So make it
SysRq-key, and SysRq-p sends the printscreen/SysRq keycode. Also killing
and stopping (Alt-[CZ]) the Terminal program in the foreground.

Then put the priviledged actions as option, with a password as option.

This would be nice.

--
Tristan