This one is shorter than usual. Things have been busy but I wanted to muse on this, because, thankfully, I didn’t get bit by it.

Linux 2.6.17 to about 2.6.24.1 or so has a nice little bug in the vmsplit syscall, wherein it fails to validate parameters. Thus, one can get root. Well I set about upgrading some machines, and the other Systems Admin here set about upgrading most of the others. One of them decided to go into an endless reboot cycle. No idea why, still don’t. A removal of power, then cold boot and it was fine.

Got to love PC hardware, and maybe that’s a better title for this one.