jeudi, août 16 2007
Par jd le jeudi, août 16 2007, 17:02 - Debian
So after rebuilding the whole archive with octave and rebuildd during 8 days, here are the results.
Some stats:
- 813 bugs
- 95 bugs already resolved
- A lot of FTBFS (some due to my buildd running out of free space)
- One DD grunting at me
- Some DD giving good advices
- A lot of thanks
Direct side effect: a lot of packages updated with more fixes thans the nostrip ones: triggering a rebuild is also triggering DD's work. 
I'll do a rebuild in some weeks to check if fixed packages are really fixed and to rebuild packages that FTBFS and wil be fixed at that time.
And thanks to Mike Hommey for this idea.
vendredi, juillet 13 2007
Par jd le vendredi, juillet 13 2007, 14:36 - Debian
I just wrote something like 20 unit tests for rebuildd. Writing them, I found at least 2 critical bugs.
Either I'm bad, or unit tests are very useful.
Or both.
dimanche, juin 17 2007
Par jd le dimanche, juin 17 2007, 11:25 - Free Software
I just failed to migrate a big project at work because of that, the D day:
Jun 15 10:46:39 hostname mysqld[20095]: Version:'5.0.32-Debian_7etch1-log' socket: '/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock' port: 3306 Debian etch distribution
Jun 15 10:46:43 hostname mysqld[20095]: mysqld got signal 11
So no, you won't use NDB, at least with MySQL 5.0.31 (included in etch). It's _so_ buggy that we get a segfault on the first DELETE statement with a 30 MB database.
Backporting version 5.0.41 from sid gives better results (at least for now).
I knew we should have used PostgreSQL from the beginning...
jeudi, mai 24 2007
Par jd le jeudi, mai 24 2007, 10:26 - Debian
I'm currently quite busy and I don't have time to manage a vote for the DeFuBu contest. I am already 2 months late for this.
I am hereby requesting some help to organise the vote. I have a list of people/bug number and you should only put this formatted and find people to vote for, and then calculate the ranking. I'll do the rest. So please contact me if you have some spare time. 
jeudi, mai 3 2007
Par jd le jeudi, mai 3 2007, 17:29 - Debian
Five years old wishlist bug might be fulfilled by some people with 5 lines code!
mardi, mars 13 2007
Par jd le mardi, mars 13 2007, 10:48 - Debian
Welcome to this 8th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the almost monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Pierre Tramo with #409352 (mplayer_1.0~rc1-12.diff.gz is CHAOTIC)
- Christian Perrier with #230485 (apache2/ssl-cert's debconf abuse makes baby jesus cry)
- Jeroen van Wolffelaar with #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.)
- Steve Langasek with #410605 (dpkg: bzip2 code in compression.c incorrectly uses zlib define (Z_ERRNO))
- Josh Triplett with #412460 (magicor-data: Penguins don't have teeth) and #398276 (xdm: don't bundle turning on sit0 irradiating me all day)
- Mike Hommey with #413660 (RFP: mozilla-firefox -- Mozilla's firefox package is required in non-free) and #413714 (iceweasel: {overflow:hidden} ugly chopping characters in half)
How the vote has been done
Four Debian related people voted, Raphael Hertzog, Jeroen van Wolffelaar, Ana Guerrero and Margarita Manterola.
Full ranking
Bugs
- #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.) (34 points)
- #412460 (magicor-data: Penguins don't have teeth) (29 points)
- #230485 (apache2/ssl-cert's debconf abuse makes baby jesus cry) (26 points)
- #398276 (xdm: don't bundle turning on sit0 irradiating me all day) (23 points)
- #410605 (dpkg: bzip2 code in compression.c incorrectly uses zlib define (Z_ERRNO)) (16 points)
- #409352 (mplayer_1.0~rc1-12.diff.gz is CHAOTIC) (15 points)
- #413660 (RFP: mozilla-firefox -- Mozilla's firefox package is required in non-free) (14 points)
- #413714 (iceweasel: {overflow:hidden} ugly chopping characters in half) (3 points)
Challengers
- Josh Triplett with (52 points with 2 bugs)
- Jeroen van Wolffelaar (34 points with 1 bug)
- Christian Perrier (26 points with 1 bug)
- Mike Hommey with (17 points with 2 bugs)
- Steve Langasek (16 points with 1 bug)
- Pierre Tramo (15 points with 1 bug)
The winners
- Bug: #409637 (tasksel: [INTL:eo] kelkaj korektoj pri la esperanta traduko.)
- Challenger: Josh Triplett
- Bug reporter: Serge Leblanc
- Voter: Raphael Hertzog with unordered tiercé: #412460, #409637 and #230485
Notes
To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number or a request to vote, or anything that may help.
About DeFuBu
mardi, février 6 2007
Par jd le mardi, février 6 2007, 11:44 - Debian
Welcome to this 7th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Loic Minier with #407127 (evolution: Dates before 1970 not supported, e.g. for birthdays) and #408989 (epiphany-browser: bugzilla.gnome.org inaccessible)
- Sune Vuorela with #407849 (script for /usr/bin/preloadkde) and #409310 (kmines: Can cheat the timer)
- Josh Triplett with #404915 (iceweasel: Icon resembles booger)
- Jeroen van Wolffelaar with #408424 (apache2: "It works!")
- Florent Bayle with #408524 (If I play piano while my computer starts up, /dev/dsp disappears !)
- Christian Perrier with #408482 (xserver-xorg: please map French Canadian (cf) to Canada (ca) layout)
- Frans Pop with #409018 (base: /etc/ld.so.nohwcap missing)
How the vote has been done
Four Debian related people voted for these bugs, Emmanuel Bouthenot, Mohammed Adnène Trojette, Julien Louis and Jade Alglave.
Full ranking
Bugs
- #408989 (epiphany-browser: bugzilla.gnome.org inaccessible) (28 points)
- #408524 (If I play piano while my computer starts up, /dev/dsp disappears !) (21 points)
- #407849 (script for /usr/bin/preloadkde) and #408424 (apache2: "It works!") (18 points)
- #407127 (evolution: Dates before 1970 not supported, e.g. for birthdays) (17 points)
- #404915 (iceweasel: Icon resembles booger) and #408482 (xserver-xorg: please map French Canadian (cf) to Canada (ca) layout) (11 points)
- #409310 (kmines: Can cheat the timer) (10 points)
- #409018 (base: /etc/ld.so.nohwcap missing) (10 points)
Challengers
- Loic Minier (45 points with 2 bugs)
- Florent Bayle with (21 points with 1 bug)
- Sune Vuorela (28 points with 2 bugs)
- Jeroen van Wolffelaar (18 points with 1 bug)
- Christian Perrier and Josh Triplett (11 points with 1 bug)
- Frans Pop (10 points with 1 bug)
The winners
- Bug: #408989 (epiphany-browser: bugzilla.gnome.org inaccessible)
- Challenger: Loic Minier
- Bug reporter: Tshepang Lekhonkhobe
- Voter: Emmanuel Bouthenot with two first bugs correct: #408524, #408989
Notes
To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number.
About DeFuBu
lundi, janvier 22 2007
Par jd le lundi, janvier 22 2007, 16:02 - Debian
Welcome to this 6th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly (even if I'm late) championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Gürkan Sengün with #270877 (wmaker: I can't swallow windows)
- Christoph Berg with #402976 (espdiff: useless manpage)
- Cyril Brulebois with #403379 (mplayer: segfault while reading an mpeg file)
- Sune Vuorela with #405464 (qt3-dev-tools: QMAKE_INCDIR_QT is wrong in qmake.conf files)
How the vote has been done
Three Debian related people voted for these bugs, Mohammed Adnène Trojette, Pierre Habouzit and Florent Bayle
Full ranking
Bugs
- #403379 (mplayer: segfault while reading an mpeg file) (6 points)
- #402976 (espdiff: useless manpage) (5 points)
- #405464 (qt3-dev-tools: QMAKE_INCDIR_QT is wrong in qmake.conf files) (4 points)
- #270877 (wmaker: I can't swallow windows) (3 points)
Challengers
- Cyril Brulebois (6 points with 1 bug)
- Christoph Berg (5 points with 1 bug)
- Sune Vuorela (4 points with 1 bug)
- Gürkan Sengün (3 points with 1 bug)
The winners
- Bug: #403379 (mplayer: segfault while reading an mpeg file) (6 points)
- Challenger: Cyril Brulebois
- Bug reporter: Aurelien Jarno
- Voter: Florent Bayle with the full good order !
Notes
To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number.
About DeFuBu
vendredi, décembre 1 2006
Par jd le vendredi, décembre 1 2006, 12:37 - Debian
Welcome to this 5th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Pierre Habouzit with #395522 (whitelister terminates immediately)
- Josselin Mouette with #396247 (sound-juicer: weird playback if disk is ejected)
- Christian Perrier with #396223 (gnome-applets-data: Colorado Springs listed as "Colourado Springs" in British English)
- Joey Hess with #393846 (wave at a webcam to overwrite file)
- Michael Ablassmeier with #397646 (exim4-config: reportbug mail issue)
How the vote has been done
Four Debian related people voted for these bugs, Philipp Kern, Julien Louis, Cyril Brulebois and David Pashley.
Full ranking
Bugs
- #393846 (wave at a webcam to overwrite file) (with 12 points)
- #396223 (gnome-applets-data: Colorado Springs listed as "Colourado Springs" in British English) (with 10 points)
- #396247 (sound-juicer: weird playback if disk is ejected) (with 9 points)
- #397646 (exim4-config: reportbug mail issue) (with 9 points)
- #395522 (whitelister terminates immediately) (with 3 points)
Challengers
- Joey Hess (12 points with 1 bug)
- Christian Perrier (10 points with 1 bug)
- Michael Ablassmeier (9 points with 1 bug) and Josselin Mouette (9 points with 1 bug)
- Pierre Habouzit (3 points with 1 bug)
The winners
- Bug: #393846 (wave at a webcam to overwrite file) (with 12 points)
- Challenger: Joey Hess
- Bug reporter: Joey Hess
- Voter: David Pashley with the nearest ordered tiercé: #393846, #396223 and #397646.
Congratulations to Joey Hess, two victories in a row
Notes
To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number.
About DeFuBu
lundi, novembre 13 2006
Par jd le lundi, novembre 13 2006, 00:49 - Free Software
I don't know why, but debmirror (or Perl ?) fails to work with Solaris.
For example this code
while(($res = $gunzf->gzreadline($line) > 0)
&& !($line =~ /^$/)) {
$buf = $buf . $line;
}
read the full buffer instead of reading a block of text separated by empty spaces...
Multiline matching (m//m) fails to work too.
So I rewrote almost the full Packages.gz parser in a dirty Perl way for a friend, and it works. I 0\/\/N3d you, fucking OS.
And there's people wanting to port Debian to that, good luck
mardi, novembre 7 2006
Par jd le mardi, novembre 7 2006, 21:13 - Naquadah Network
On sunday, I was looking around at the /proc/cpuinfo on one of my last server. I saw that this Pentium 4 had a lot more of cpu flags that the one on my workstation. I discovered the nx flags and its purpose some days before, but I did not know what the lm flags was for...
Oh my god, that's the 64 bits support. This box is an amd64 and it was installed as an i386. That's like using a knife to kill a kitten when you have an axe!
So, even if the box was 800 km away from me, I decided to reinstall it from scratch, with the help of a serial cable connected on it.
That was so easy. I just love Debian for such things.
- Step one: recompile linux-2.6-2.6.18 with support for 64 bits processors, that was easy, Goswin Brederlow made a patch I used and adapted in #379090.
- Step two: scratch your swap and debootstrap an amd64 sarge in it. Copy blindly your /lib/modules/2.6.18-1-amd64 inside.
- Step three: reboot with your 64 bits kernel on your brand new 64 bits Debian system and launch sshd.
- Step four: ask everyone on IRC WHY THE HELL you get sshd killed with a fucking kernel backtrace on your serial console each time you try to ssh to your box
- Step five: listen everyone advices and dist-upgrade to etch
- Step six: backup all the old data and scratch all your partitions, because you want LVM now. And migrating to 64 bits and LVM at the same time is more dangerous, so more exciting, so more fun.
- Step seven: move your brand new amd64 etch into your old root partition. Believe in you and that you did not forget anything to backup.
- Step eight: create your logical volumes and move your stuff in here, like /var, /usr and then blindly reboot. Thanks god you have a serial console.
- Step nine: apt-get install everything back and upgrade your old sarge conffiles to etch.
- Step ten: wonder why slapd is segfaulting again and again, and then yell after this fucking Berkeley DB files that are not architecture independant. Flame yourself because you don't have a LDIF backup of your LDAP tree.
- Step eleven: install a i386 sarge with LDAP to slapcat your old LDAP tree and restore it.
- Step twelve: Take a break. Have a Kit^Wbeer.
In the end, I'm happy, even if everyone is wondering why I killed a server during 10 hours just because it's better.
vendredi, novembre 3 2006
Par jd le vendredi, novembre 3 2006, 10:16 - Debian
Welcome to this 4th issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Pierre Habouzit with #316531 (apt-listchanges: closes regex too strict), #390794 (apache2-mpm-prefork: /usr/sbin/apache2 not executable) and #393149 (uae: cannot open display)
- kolter with #390263 (uswsusp: "Linux" not capitalized in package description)
- Julien Louis with #31581 (project: Time between releases is too long) and #393083 (Hijacked website)''
- David Pashley with #393511 (irssi should notice when you are typing something in the wrong channel)
How the vote has been done
Four Debian related people voted for these bugs, Philipp Kern, Florent Bayle, Cyril Brulebois and Gregory Colpart.
Mohammed Adnène Trojette should vote quicker next time.
Full ranking
Bugs
- #393511 (irssi should notice when you are typing something in the wrong channel) (21 points)
- #393083 (Hijacked website)'' (19 points)
- #31581 (project: Time between releases is too long) (13 points)
- #390794 (apache2-mpm-prefork: /usr/sbin/apache2 not executable) (13 points)
- #316531 (apt-listchanges: closes regex too strict) (9 points)
- #390263 (uswsusp: "Linux" not capitalized in package description) (5 points)
- #393149 (uae: cannot open display) (4 points)
Challengers
- Julien Louis (32 points with 2 bugs)
- Pierre Habouzit (26 points with 3 bugs)
- David Pashley (21 points with 1 bug)
- kolter (5 points with 1 bug)
The winners
- Bug: #393511 (irssi should notice when you are typing something in the wrong channel) (21 points)
- Challenger: Julien Louis
- Bug reporter: Jason Spiro
- Voter: Florent Bayle with the nearest non-ordered quarté: #393083, #393511, #390794, #31581
Notes
To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number.
About DeFuBu
mardi, octobre 31 2006
Par jd le mardi, octobre 31 2006, 11:10 - Debian
I did not find anyone to vote for this month DeFuBu, mail me if you want to!
lundi, octobre 2 2006
Par jd le lundi, octobre 2 2006, 12:26 - Debian
Welcome to this 3rd issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Benjamin E. Seidenberg with #330031 (cogito is too much fun)
- Josselin Mouette with #385063 (python-gtk2: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation in pygtk.py and __init__.py) and #256039 ('nicotine' in 'top' makes me want to smoke)
- Clément Stenac with #385561 (konsole crashed after my cat jumped on the mouse)
- Gregory Colpart with #313492 (xscreensaver/GLSnake has sexually inappropriate imagery)
- Julien Louis with #387832 (init: no have idea :/ error on system)
How the vote has been done
Four Debian related people voted for these bugs: Pierre Machard, Pierre Habouzit, Florent Bayle and Mohammed Adnène Trojette.
Samuel Hocevar did not vote because he was not paid for it.
Full ranking
Bugs
- #385561 (konsole crashed after my cat jumped on the mouse) (17 points)
- #256039 ('nicotine' in 'top' makes me want to smoke) (15 points)
- #330031 (cogito is too much fun) (10 points)
- #387832 (init: no have idea :/ error on system) (9 points)
- #313492 (xscreensaver/GLSnake has sexually inappropriate imagery) (7 points)
- #385063 (python-gtk2: inconsistent use of tabs and spaces in indentation in pygtk.py and __init__.py) (2 points)
Challengers
- Clément Stenac (17 points in one bug)
- Josselin Mouette (17 points in two bugs)
- Benjamin E. Seidenberg (10 points)
- Julien Louis (9 points)
- Gregory Colpart (7 points)
The winners
- Bug: #385561 (konsole crashed after my cat jumped on the mouse) (17 points)
- Challenger: Clément Stenac
- Bug reporter: Nicolas Caval
- Voter: Florent Bayle with the nearest non-ordered tiercé: #385561, #330031, #256039
Notes
To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number.
About DeFuBu
un rétrolien
vendredi, août 25 2006
Par jd le vendredi, août 25 2006, 15:51 - Debian
Welcome to this 2nd issue of the DeFuBu contest, the monthly championship of the funniest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Julien Danjou with #360285 (ITP: libjoey -- forks itself and does several things at the same time), #102434 (gpm: reverse marking) and #178290 (grave problems when badly mixed with irda)
- Pierre Habouzit with #379912 (kodo: Incorrectly described as useless)
- Julien Goodwin with #318229 (XOrg package is controlled by a woman disrespectful of men (which make up the vast majority of debian developers))
- Frans Pop with #258723 (vim: replace ${shlibs:Depends] in debian/control)
- Daniel Burrows with #331210 (aptitude maintainer should do bug DB clean-up and/or bug merging)
- Andres Salomon with #236874 (xscreensaver: pacman screensaver plays game incorrectly)
- Loic Minier with #382014 (can't fly to girlfriend) and #375789 (gnome-osd: information leakage when screensaver is active)
- Florent Bayle with #381978 (debian-installer: etch d-i installs an antique mouse cursor)
- Julien Louis with #382181 (nmap is a clairvoyant)
- Cyril Lacoux with #373142 (apt-get install spamc on testing removes sarge kernel image)
How the vote has been done
Five Debian related people voted for these bugs: Roland Mas, Alexis Sukrieh, Clément Stenac, kolter and Yves-Alexis Perez.
Full ranking
Bugs
- #360285 (ITP: libjoey -- forks itself and does several things at the same time) (52 points)
- #102434 (gpm: reverse marking) (44 points)
- #236874 (xscreensaver: pacman screensaver plays game incorrectly) (43 points)
- #258723 (vim: replace ${shlibs:Depends] in debian/control) (37 points)
- #331210 (aptitude maintainer should do bug DB clean-up and/or bug merging) (33 points)
- #382014 (can't fly to girlfriend) (31 points)
- #373142 (apt-get install spamc on testing removes sarge kernel image) (29 points)
- #379912 (kodo: Incorrectly described as useless) and #382181 (nmap is a clairvoyant) (26 points)
- #381978 (debian-installer: etch d-i installs an antique mouse cursor) (15 points)
- #318229 (XOrg package is controlled by a woman disrespectful of men (which make up the vast majority of debian developers)) (22 points)
- #178290 (grave problems when badly mixed with irda) and #375789 (gnome-osd: information leakage when screensaver is active) (13 points)
Challengers
- Julien Danjou (109 points)
- Loic Minier (44 points)
- Andres Salomon (43 points)
- Frans Pop (37 points)
- Daniel Burrows (33 points)
- Cyril Lacoux (29 points)
- Julien Louis and Pierre Habouzit (26 points)
- Julien Goodwin (22 points)
- Florent Bayle (15 points)
The winners
- Bug: #360285 (ITP: libjoey -- forks itself and does several things at the same time)
- Challenger: Julien Danjou
- Bug reporter: Alexander Wirt
- Voter: Roland Mas with the correct reverse ordered tiercé: [1] #236874, [2] #102434 and [3] #360285.
Notes
To participate, simply drop me an email with a bug number.
About DeFuBu
jeudi, août 10 2006
Par jd le jeudi, août 10 2006, 22:06 - Free Software
I must be very mean but the story of madduck about XFS made me laugh.
Let me explain: I exactly had the same kind of problem on my workstation 2 years ago. A single hard reboot used to totally fuck up some random files (which were opened in read-only mode before the crash, like libraries) on my file system. Since that day I regularly spite on XFS, and I am quite amused that more than 2 years later, XFS is still totally crap!
I don't understand how a so broken file system can be still in the Linux kernel. Even without power outage, I used to have dead lock problems by simply moving a (big) file and opening it at the same time. Even if I heard that this bug was fixed some versions later, I totally stopped to use that filesystem in favor of ext3, which is really the more stable filesystem I have ever seen (maybe after ext2 :-)).
mercredi, août 9 2006
Par jd le mercredi, août 9 2006, 20:05 - Debian
After several hours of gdb, I won against #381456. I'm happy.
vendredi, juillet 28 2006
Par jd le vendredi, juillet 28 2006, 10:51 - Debian
As I speak, there's now MORE THAN 300 BUGS IN ETCH. You all Debian Developer suck hard.
A very good job was done by french developers and some others guys last month to reduce this number under 300 before the 15th of June. Now we should be under 200 (yes, two hundred) in 3 days. That seems totally impossible, and the french team (or maybe I should say the A team) is quite on holidays. Unfortunately it seems that MadCoder was right.
Anyway, I'd like to thank people like Steinar who tries to make continuous effort to squash down RC bugs. These sort of guys really help.
mardi, juillet 25 2006
Par jd le mardi, juillet 25 2006, 16:50 - Debian
Welcome to this 1st issue of DeDuBu contest, the monthly championship of the dumbest bug reported to the Debian BTS.
The challengers
- Florent Bayle with #355455 (trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libpano12.la', which is also in package libpano12)
- Samuel Hocevar with #207349 (fortune-mod: internal error) and #177244 (chromium: Infringing on Bruce Springsteen's Copyright)
- Benjamin Drieu with #177128 (fetchmail initialisation fails on AIX 5.2 on JFS2 filesystem)
- James Westby with #374599 (cupsys: bug reporter is hallucinating) and #371032 (cupsys: Upgrade to 1.2 broke printing on local parallel GDI printer)
- Ken Bloom with #340111 (jython doesn't perform static initialization of classes called by other java classes)
How the vote has been done
Five Debian related people voted for these bugs: Pierre Habouzit, Pierre Machard, Julien Louis, Mohammed Adnène Trojette and Julien Cristau.
Full ranking
Bugs
- #177244 (chromium: Infringing on Bruce Springsteen's Copyright) (28 points)
- #207349 (fortune-mod: internal error) (26 points)
- #374599 (cupsys: bug reporter is hallucinating) (16 points)
- #177128 (fetchmail initialisation fails on AIX 5.2 on JFS2 filesystem) (15 points)
- #355455 (trying to overwrite `/usr/lib/libpano12.la', which is also in package libpano12) (10 points)
- #371032 (cupsys: Upgrade to 1.2 broke printing on local parallel GDI printer) (9 points)
- #340111 (jython doesn't perform static initialization of classes called by other java classes) (8 points)
Challengers
- Samuel Hocevar (54 points)
- James Westby (25 points)
- Benjamin Drieu (15 points)
- Florent Bayle (10 points)
- Ken Bloom (8 points)
The winners
- Bug: #177244 (chromium: Infringing on Bruce Springsteen's Copyright)
- Challenger: Samuel Hocevar
- Bug reporter: Kingsley G. Morse Jr.
- Voter: Pierre Habouzit with the nearest ordered tiercé: [1] #177244, [2] #207349 and [3] #355455.
About DeDuBu
mardi, juillet 11 2006
Par jd le mardi, juillet 11 2006, 21:58 - Free Software
In response to madduck's entry about sysrqd, I just wanted to add something:
Having clear authenticatiin password is, as he understood, in a way, a designing concept. Using sysrqd over the Internet is probably crazy, but using it in a private LAN or over a VPN, is not. We have to reach a compromise.
For example, I won't use PAM, because I already saw PAM unable to response to authentification request on half-crashed system. Moreover, I already refused some patches that proposed to log sysrqd events, because I also already saw system call to syslog crashing and blocking a process.
It's also possible to use a one shot password, and to change it when you have used it once.
Use it, don't use it, I don't care, but it can save your life if it is well used.