In message <mtuu27d272k.fsf@home-on-the-dome.mit.edu>, Nathan J. Williams write
>1) what you think it ought to do, exactly (hook into userland to run
>   a program, such as "shutdown -r now"? make the kernel run
>   sys_sync()? something else?)

Probably about the same thing that other BSD's have done with it, and that
NetBSD did once upon a time; offer to reboot, look for a y/n, and if you
reboot, sync disks and reboot.

>2) who it would be useful to, and when (systems that are *really*
>   wedged? Or just ones with a wedged console that don't have
>   convenient remote login capability?)

Well, most recently, people whose mom's laptops wedged when trying to use
a modem and who were trying to verify how-wedged.  ;)

>3) what mechanisim would control whether it is enabled (since it's
>   clear that even if such an option were avaliable, it would not be
>   appropriate for all sites).

Probably a kernel option.

>> Console abort is *useful*.  It should be available by default, IMHO.

>Making it avaliable by default would constitute a large deviation from
>the behavior of prior versions of NetBSD. It's a deviation that I
>suspect anyone other than single-owner single-user desktop machines
>would find at least unwelcome, and at most a serious security problem.

But turning it *off* was a large deviation; it "used to work".  I don't
remember any real discussion of it at the time, so I don't know when
it was, but I used to use this on my i386 boxes.

-s