I killed my system with grep

[Parv]

in message <20050225135707.GC18789 at alzatex.com>,
wrote Loren M. Lang thusly...
>
> On Fri, Feb 25, 2005 at 12:14:04PM +0100, Ramiro Aceves wrote:
> > 
> > I am running a FreeBSD 5.3 system with 64MB RAM and 150 MB swap.
> > 
> > Yesterday I entered the command:
> > 
> > # grep -R something /
> 
> You probably hit a file under /dev/ and caused grep to hang.  It's
> possible that as root, certain device files might hang the system,
> but nothing comes to mind at the moment unless /dev/io could do
> it.  Also, think about what happens when grep hit's /dev/zero.  It
> will never finish.

Would using -I option (not search text-like files) help to avoid
above described hang ups in /dev?


  - Parv

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