Sacrificial Linux boxes

[David Nicol]

On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 07:10:11 -0800 (PST), Jack <quiet_celt at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sorry, not being clear again. By a sacrificial box,
> I mean a box that if the kernel or a driver explodes
> and crashes the box nothing important is lost. Also,
> since the kernel may crash while testing, hardware
> that is somewhat resilient to destruction due to
> system crashes that require cold reboots would be
> desirable.

1:  kernel freeze or driver crash is not going to wipe your file system.  
having a known-good kernel on a boot floppy or in your lilo configuration is
a basic necessity when building your own kernel.  Backing up all files
and installing microparticle filters is advised when you need to do
full CYA.

2: All hardware is resilient to destruction due to system crashes that
require cold reboots.  Microporcessor engineers did away with the HCF machine
code instruction long ago.