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X11 Serial Killer?

Posted by Cliff on from the no-I-don't-mean-jack-the-ripper dept.

Chris Benard asks: "I frequently have problems with X just taking control of my keyboard, but not my mouse. My mouse still moves, but it isn't able to interact with X (not unlike a windows freeze). However, I would like to know if there is a program to listen on a serial port for commands and execute them as root. I have an HP48G calculator, and I would like to make a few short commands to execute from it to my serial port, such as killall -9 X and killall -9 netscape-communicator. Please let me know of any programs existing and any SDKs that I might use to produce my own program. " Has anyone managed to come up with a hack that might work for this situation?

5 of 14 comments (clear)

  1. Done this with PDA by Elvii · · Score: 2

    All I did is run getty to ttyS1 (where my palm is) and run a palm telnet app on the PDA, login just like a dumb terminal except dumb terminals don't have graffiti. :) login in as root, kill X, whatever ya want to do. Also came in handy for me when SVGAlib froze my console playing quake2. Not sure how this can work with the Ti, but if it has a telnet app and a serial cable of some sort, it might work.

    bash: ispell: command not found

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  2. HP48 Software by kile · · Score: 2

    Go to the HP48 Terminal Emulation Programs page and download a terminal emulator.

    I think this is what you are looking for.

  3. Re:This may sound like a stupid questoin... by Spoing · · Score: 2
    if I were to do this while logged in as david and do an 'alt-SysRq-l' will I be able to bring the machine down to its knees?

    Yes.

    ObComment: Since this isn't a default part of any binary distribution I know of, you'll have to compile it. While there, it should take only a few minutes to remove the keyboard commands you don't want users to have...but then you won't have them either.

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  4. A standard getty prolly by technos · · Score: 2

    A standard getty and a HP term emulator will work great if you need an extensive set of stuff to be run, and you are on a 'secure' system. If you don't care about security on the box, and only need a couple of commands run, there is a getty out there called rungetty that can run other programs instead of login; All you'd need is to 'fake' a serial connection to have it run said program. (I keep one running on a spare serial port that runs reboot; All I needed was a momentary toggle to complete it)

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  5. Re:More about Magic Sysrq on RH6.1+ and maybe othe by Spoing · · Score: 2

    That's interesting...it looks like they took it out in 6.2 (I just looked at a 'fresh' test system).

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    A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.