ATT 3b2 firmware password

[Roy Smith]

> In <305 at pinney.munsell.UUCP> pac at munsell.UUCP (Paul Czarnecki) complains:
> I reached around and powered the beast off.  On my screen flashes the
> words, "System shutdown in 5 minutes."

In article <256 at mrstve.UUCP> rjk at mrstve.UUCP (Richard Kuhns) replies:
> If you "reached around to power the beast off", [...]  you simply started
> `powerdown' running with all its defaults [...] to power the machine down
> as fast as possible, log in as `powerdown', or try `shutdown -y -g0 -i0'.

	I've never used a 3b2, so I'm taking Richard's word for it that the
only way to power-down the machine is via a software command.  I'm sorry,
but if this is really true, then that machine has some serious brain-damage
to it.  Hell, my Vax has software shutdown, but when the system die{ it's
nice to know I can still hit that reset button or turn the key-switch to
"off".  Comes in handy when smoke starts to curl out of the disk drive too.

	On the other side of the coin, I wouldn't want some software bug to
be able to power-down my system by mistake -- I know my disk drives are
designed for that, but I still sleep better if I spin then down before
turning off the power.  Unix may still need a lot of improvements, but
/dev/powerswitch isn't one of them.
-- 
Roy Smith, {allegra,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016