Who can tell me what this does?

[iago]

I know the answer, of course. 

"kill -9 -1"

[Vex3]

I can also tell you... but that would be no fun for everyone else.

[Ergot]

I don't know what -1 does, but I could take a good guess

[iago]

I don't know what -1 does, but I could take a good guess

What would that guess be?

[Eric]

It closes all processes owned by the user with a process ID greater than 1.  I had to Google the -9, only to find out that it was exactly what I thought it was.

[trust]

It closes all processes owned by the current user. The -9 is the SIGKILL signal.

[iago]

Good job!

And can you guess the effect of running it on my laptop before doing "man kill" to find out what -1 does?

Instant lock-up for the current user! Woo!

Next, this one's tougher, who can explain to me what this does when run in Bash?
:-(){ :|:& };:

[trust]

It can't be good cause none of those are smily faces. :|

[iago]

It can't be good cause none of those are smily faces. :|

haha

And by the way, _please_ don't try that out on my server if you have access

[Joe]

Alright, thanks for the warning!

[Ergot]

ergot@darkside:~$ :-(){ :|:& };:

shit :/

[Joe]

Code: [Select]

while (1) {
  fork();
}
Can I do it yet? =)

[iago]

Code: [Select]

while (1) {
  fork();
}
Can I do it yet? =)

That's basically what it does, but how?

[Vex3]

Since iago gets to give all the puzzle's I will throw some in aswell but iago you can't answer.

I will start these easy and get harder....

ps -ax|more

[mynameistmp]

Code:
while (1) {
  fork();
}

Can I do it yet? =)

That's basically what it does, but how?

He won't know unless he can find the log of me explaining it to him last night ;P

[iago]

Code:
while (1) {
  fork();
}

Can I do it yet? =)

That's basically what it does, but how?

He won't know unless he can find the log of me explaining it to him last night ;P

Haha, I didn't think he'd figure that out himself :)

To quote somebody else:

The ':()' defines a fuction ':' with a fuction body of
{
 : | : &
}

As you can see this is a recursive call as the fuction ':' is called,
it's output passed via a pipe as input to the fuction ':' and this
whole command is run in the background '&' .

The last ':' in the string (after the ';') calls the fuction and therefore
starts it all of.

(Krazed edit: Disabled smileys.)