What would happen if I where to cat /dev/mem > /dev/null
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What would happen if I where to cat /dev/mem > /dev/null
Hi all,
I was reading the "Can root harm my computer" thread and I have a quick question. What would happen if I did a cat /dev/mem > /dev/null and cat /dev/null > /dev/mem?
ok i tryed cat /dev/random > /dev/mem all its doing is making the little lite that says when the CPU is being used blink every once in a while, but its not crashing, altho ic ant use my system as cat wont let go of my system!, ok i need to reboot as i have no way to kill cat or close cat, , thats seee what happens after reboot
note: im runing as super user (user 0, root , what name you want to use)
ok rebooted and everyhting normal, /dev/mem is still ther, every acts and looks like it should
besides making my system unusedable it did nothing to hurt it (note:, if i was able to switch terminals then i coulda probly killed cat and got outa that) so i think it was just a waste of time
bad thngs happen...
ive had the mouse mouving and clicking all over the scrren, secising, drag and dropping... everything...
and once the mouse opened a second terminal, and gave it focus.
then the keyboard was entering all commands...
most of which gave a "oidjfgsoindgjsb unknown command"
I always wondered why someone said cat /dev/null > /dev/mem would do damage that one would have to reinstall: it would just blank the RAM no? And the RAM gets reset every reboot? Unless of course someone was writing to the filesystem and had to copy it from the RAM...
What is /dev/mem actually? Does it count the swap file? Is it just the RAM or more? The BIOS or CMOS?
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