Carl Cerecke writes: > Sometimes it is just X windows that gets its knickers in a knot, not > Linux. Usually the following works:
Indeed, Linux enthusiasts will tell you that if you can still log in from another computer on the network (or *could* log in, if you had a network, and your computer was running a telnet or secure shell daemon) or if you could still log in from a terminal connected to your serial port, it hasn't _really_ crashed. Of course, if you don't have those facilities available, then the result is the same. You have to kill the power. Sometimes X locks the keyboard out also, so you can't Ctrl-Alt-Fkey to another virtual terminal. Also, if you kill X you will also kill all the programs using that X session. It might not be X that's the problem, rather some rouge process which is grabbing all the input. If you know what that program is, you could kill that instead. The other thing to consider is that sometimes if you wait, things will get back to normal. Back in the old days of 2000, I used a Pentium 90, and I did some graphics manipulation with the Gimp which rather taxed the poor machine. Sometimes I thought the thing had crashed, but then I discovered if I went away for a while (sometimes an hour) and came back, not only had control been returned to me, but the Gimp had finished what I asked it. Often things with bad memory leaks will crash out of their own accord after a while, also. A.
