CRASH your TANDEM : was : RE : How do you make your UNIX crash

[Warren Tucker]

In article <669020852.14148 at mindcraft.com> karish at mindcraft.com (Chuck Karish) writes:
>In article <1991Mar14.202237.23294 at ugle.unit.no>
>halvard at spurv.runit.sintef.no (Halvard Halvorsen) writes:
>>did you fellas read the signature to this guy ???
>> i mean : he works for tandem computers - so the reason why he asks for how
>> to crash 'your UNIX' should be obvious ???   ;^)

>The answer to that question would probably be more interesting
>to "this guy" than would answers about other computers.  I talked
>to a couple of Tandem engineers after USENIX this January.  They
>bragged that their systems failed the SVVS (requiring waivers)
>because some tests to invoke PANIC messages didn't work; Tandem
>UNIX doesn't crash under some of the conditions expected by AT&T.

Umm, yeah!  A friend of mind talked about his Integrity S2 being forced
to crash during a demo (by removing a Large number of Important Cards
from the box while it was running!).  He plugged them back in and
voila, a vi session repainted itself on the terminal next to him.
(Flames about potential security issues **entirely** miss the point).

There are many hundreds of PANICs in AT&T code. Tandem has it down to
nine, all reflecting unforeseen software logic errors.  They checksum
pcbs and other system databases.  It be righteous.
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Warren Tucker, TuckerWare     emory!n4hgf!wht or wht at n4hgf.Mt-Park.GA.US
"An ANSI C elephant: just like the real one, but the position, shape and
length of the trunk and tail are left to the vendor's discretion." -- me