Fun with VMS

[utzoo!duke!unc!whm]

From: Bill Mitchell (N.C.State University)

Here is a rather odd Eunice problem.

Our system dates from February 1981, I would be interested in knowing if any
other people running Eunice can reproduce the following sequence of events.

1) Create a C program:
	main()
	{
		system("hello");
	}

2) Create another C program:
	main()
	{
		puts("Hello there.");
	}
Compile and link both, install the first one in [bin] as MAN.EXE.  Install
the second one in [bin] as HELLO.EXE.

3)  From an account without PHY_IO and LOG_IO type:
	unix man
This should print the message "Hello there." on your terminal.

4)  Get all the users off the system and log into an account with LOG_IO
privelege.  (You might want to use a backup disk if you don't trust
the VMS disk rebuilding routines.)
Type:
	unix man
On our system (VMS 2.2) this will generate a Page Read Error.  The process
running will be stopped as if a stop/id was entered.  Other users will
be able to do some things, but eventually there processes will be stopped
in the same manner.

If you try to logon, you will get the Username and Password prompts and
then the Welcome to Vax.... message, but then your process will die.
Another carriage return gets the Username prompt.  The only way to stop
the system is to halt the processor.

Note that if the program with the system() call is not called "man", it
doesn't blow up.  (I should just say that man always blows up, others 
might work too, but I have not tried all permutations of 9 characters.)
If the program is not in [bin] it doesn't blow up.  And if you don't
have the LOG_IO privelege, it doesn't blow up.  (once again I haven't checked
each and every privelege, but LOG_IO is enough, and hence PHY_IO also).

Perhaps something is getting written into the paging file, so perhaps we
are just lucky that it didn't land in INDEXF.SYS.

I have yet to call Kashtan on this matter, so stay tuned for more developments.
					Bill
					duke!unc!whm