Reply to post: That's been done before...

Sysadmin sank IBM mainframe by going one VM too deep

rnturn

That's been done before...

Back in the '80s (when I was working at a University as a research engineer) I came in one Saturday to get some work done and couldn't get the big IBM 43xx box to respond. Figuring I'd missed an annoucement about some scheduled system patching I went home. I later found out that what had happened was that some kid had figured out he could launch another VM inside his VM. And then proceeded to run a third VM inside /that/ VM. Apparently, while creating these nested VMs, he consumed all of the available temporary disk space (what I noticed during my aborted attempt to get some work done: no temp space available). It was the third VM that did him in. The system operators--likely after /they'd/ gotten notified about the temp space being unavailable--finally figured out was was going on and kicked him off the system. His stunt got him kicked out of the honors program he had been in. No word on whether IBM offered him a job or not.

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