On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 03:51, Voytek wrote: > I've just tried to switch to an X session from command line, and, it seems > the machine locked up solid, the screen has starnge pattern, I can't switch > back to char. mode session, CTRL-BS doesn't help, C-A-D does nothing: > > is there any key combos to try just before I reach for the big red switch ?
I'm not sure if it's present in standard distribution kernels, but it may be worth trying the alt-sysrq key combos. In a nutshell, there's a handful of keystrokes (all involving holding Alt, hitting SysRq, then another key) that should always get a response, unless the kernel itself is locked up tight. At the very least, they'll let you sync your filesystems and mount them read-only, avoiding a fsck on reboot. If you have the kernel source installed, details of the "Magic SysRq" interface are in Documentation/sysrq.txt of your source tree. The article describing usage at http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue81/vikas.html is also a fairly good read. Cheers, -- Pete -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
