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As long time SoylentNews community member Marand observed during some recent discussion of severe systemd boot problems, it turns out that systemd disables the magic SysRq key.
The magic SysReq key is described at Wikipedia as:
[...] a key combination understood by the Linux kernel, which allows the user to perform various low-level commands regardless of the system's state. It is often used to recover from freezes, or to reboot a computer without corrupting the filesystem.
A Fedora user who logged a bug report for this issue back in 2013 described the problem with systemd's unexpected and harmful default setting:
As systemd depends on many files on a rootfs, in case of any problems with rootfs, it is not able to do its basic function - control processes and (cleanly) shutdown/reboot when crtl-alt-del is pressed on local keyboard. As this is a feature, I'd like to ask to enable the sysrq by default on Fedora, otherwise it is not possible to reboot system even locally in case of emergency situation.
While that Fedora bug report is set to CLOSED NOTABUG, other Linux distros, like Mageia and Debian GNU/Linux, have restored the proper behavior.
Now that this problem has come to light, all Fedora users should evaluate whether or not they need to fix their systems to work around systemd's incorrect default setting. Users of other Linux distributions using systemd should also evaluate their systems, too, in case their distro has not yet fixed this unexpected bug.
(Score: 1) by NickFortune on Tuesday December 23 2014, @10:26PM
It does rather seem as though pressure is being brought to bear for distros to adopt systemd as the default, and in some cases only, init system. And the systemd camp also appear to attempting to make many other packages dependent on systemd. It's easy to get the idea that they'd like to make it difficult, if not impossible, to use anything other than systemd in major Linux distro.
Well sure. Of course the only freedom I really want is to have my chosen distro give me the option of not using your chosen package. I mean, you know, without having to start my own distro and rewrite half the source code to code around systemd dependencies. I don't see why you can't run systemd and I run sysvinit on the same distro. One the other hand, judging by the actions of the systemd team, they seem to think that they only way they can have their freedom is by trying to deny that choice to others.
Are you sure you're backing the right horse in this race? Your team don't seem to care about the values you just cited.
Honestly? By this point I don't much care about the technical issues. I feel like someone is trying to force me accept this thing. I don't want it. That should be sufficient reason.
Similarly, if enough people feel as I do (and there certainly seem to be a few of us) then that should be sufficient reason not to adopt systemd as the sole and mandatory init system in a long established distro, particularly when doing so against widespread and vigorous opposition.