Destructive fun with Linux

[ashibaka]

Originally posted by viperlin

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(void) {
while (1)
fork();
}

The best thing I did at summer camp this year was write a version of this which prints out "Hello, my name is $UID" before forking. It was fun to watch the computer blowing up... of course then I had to reboot

[Satanic Atheist]

Floog,

Thanks for the help. I'll take it more as a warning that anything practical. Long-lasting damage is not really what I was after. I guess I could overclock the graphics card and CPU to ridiculous proportions, pull the power plug, wait for everything to cool down, disconnect the CPU fan and see which burns out faster, but my aim is to completely destroy a Linux box with as many weird and wonderful effects as possible (and without the costly expense of replacing components).

I guess the faster way to destroy a machine is a shotgun through the hard drive, but since I've only just bought this one that's not really an option.

I'd love to see how long a hard drive can be kept running with continous writes before it's totally warped into the next dimension... Hehe...

James

[folkert]

disconnect the CPU fan and see which burns out faster

You could be amazed, I was:

I removed the cpu fan from my overclocked celeron366@458, and what happend: It is still working.

At work a pentium133 (yes still working) had a power-supply fan that got stuck in dust. the computer was working for at least a week (about 9 hours a day) after I discovered it (and bevore I replaced the power-supply)

[voidinit]

This isn't destructive or annoying the slightest, but it's a great bit of code to slip into a newb sysadmins .bashrc or .bash_profile.

Just copy and paste this code into a shell script and run it. If the formatting gets messed up in the copy/paste, then the letters might not line up properly.

!/bin/bash
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m     \033[0m      \033[30m\033[41m          \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m       \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m     \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m     \033[0m      \033[30m\033[41m          \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m       \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[0m"

echo -en " o                                             \o_"
echo -e "\033[31m/\033[0mAieee!"
echo -en "<\==-      -  -  -              -  -  -      __/"
echo -e "\033[31m<\033[0m"
echo -e "/ \                                            \\"

[zeke676]

This isn't destructive or annoying the slightest, but it's a great bit of code to slip into a newb sysadmins .bashrc or .bash_profile.

Just copy and paste this code into a shell script and run it. If the formatting gets messed up in the copy/paste, then the letters might not line up properly.

!/bin/bash
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m     \033[0m      \033[30m\033[41m          \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m       \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m     \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m          \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m        \033[30m\033[41m \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[30m\033[41m     \033[0m      \033[30m\033[41m          \033[0m    \033[30m\033[41m       \033[0m"
echo -e "\033[0m"

echo -en " o                                             \o_"
echo -e "\033[31m/\033[0mAieee!"
echo -en "<\==-      -  -  -              -  -  -      __/"
echo -e "\033[31m<\033[0m"
echo -e "/ \                                            \\"

[deathadder]

Ok, that one is going into a .bashrc at work tomorrow voidinit

[ladoga]

You could be amazed, I was:

I removed the cpu fan from my overclocked celeron366@458, and what happend: It is still working.

At work a pentium133 (yes still working) had a power-supply fan that got stuck in dust. the computer was working for at least a week (about 9 hours a day) after I discovered it (and bevore I replaced the power-supply)

My friend had his Duron's heatsink misplaced and results were similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQUj1Huxsqs

[ladoga]

Once I intended to do mkdosfs -I /dev/sdb, which was my USB stick..but somehow I just made a typo. (/dev/sda as my system drive)
# mkdosfs -I /dev/sda

It will wipe out partition information and make your hard disk one big and empty "superfloppy" formatted fat drive. Have fun trying to recover your system from that. It is possible.

After one night of sweating and experimenting (i had no backup) with various system rescue tools i managed to recover all my partitions and files getting the system back into condition it was before (i intended to do mkdosfs -I /dev/sdb, which was my USB stick). testdisk utility was involved.

[folkert]

My friend had his Duron's heatsink misplaced and results were similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQUj1Huxsqs

Verry impressive