Sysrq
What is the magic SysRq key?
It is a 'magical' key combo you can hit which the kernel will respond to regardless of whatever else it is doing, unless it is completely locked up.
How do I enable the magic SysRq key?
You need to say "yes" to 'Magic SysRq key (CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ)' when configuring the kernel. When running a kernel with SysRq compiled in, /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq controls the functions allowed to be invoked via the SysRq key. By default the file contains 1 which means that every possible SysRq request is allowed (in older versions SysRq was disabled by default, and you were required to specifically enable it at run-time but this is not the case any more). Here is the list of possible values in /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq:
0 - disable sysrq completely
1 - enable all functions of sysrq
>1 - bitmask of allowed sysrq functions (see below for detailed function
description):
2 - enable control of console logging level
4 - enable control of keyboard (SAK, unraw)
8 - enable debugging dumps of processes etc.
16 - enable sync command
32 - enable remount read-only
64 - enable signalling of processes (term, kill, oom-kill)
128 - allow reboot/poweroff
256 - allow nicing of all RT tasks
You can set the value in the file by the following command:
echo "number" >/proc/sys/kernel/sysrq
Note that the value of /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq influences only the invocation via a keyboard. Invocation of any operation via /proc/sysrq-trigger is always allowed (by a user with admin privileges).