Recommended Posts

Just to introduce myself, my name's Tessa, but umm I'm having a small issue with my laptop in which I just installed linux for the first time a few days ago and I'm still a bit of a COMPLETE novice. It's been working perfectly so far, but then as I was just trying to write an email my mouse became completely unresponsive, as well as the keyboard. Haven't really found a way to reboot it either, because the power button doesn't seem to want to work. The only thing I can figure is to unplug it and let the battery die.

But is there any other alternative, since I don't have 3-4 hours to wait for the battery to die?

Any response would be appreciated, even if it's "nope, you're screwed"

Link to post
Share on other sites

Usually control+alt+backspace will kill the x-server(the graphical environment) and you can shutdown from the terminal.In my experience a frozen system is often due to an application eating memory or cpu cycles. How much memory do you have installed?

Link to post
Share on other sites

X11 is a bit touchy and it dies in unpleasant ways. Unfortunately the only halfway reliable way I've found to deal with it locally is to use the Magic SysRq Key to break out to a console (Alt-SysRq-R then Ctrl-Alt-F1). It almost always corrupts the display, but you can get back into X without any trouble with startx.

The problem with that solution is that you may not the MSK enabled.

Link to post
Share on other sites
X11 is a bit touchy and it dies in unpleasant ways.  Unfortunately the only halfway reliable way I've found to deal with it locally is to use the Magic SysRq Key to break out to a console (Alt-SysRq-R then Ctrl-Alt-F1).  It almost always corrupts the display, but you can get back into X without any trouble with startx.

The problem with that solution is that you may not the MSK enabled.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Not sure what MSK is, but the above option did not yield any results either....

Link to post
Share on other sites
X11 is a bit touchy and it dies in unpleasant ways.  Unfortunately the only halfway reliable way I've found to deal with it locally is to use the Magic SysRq Key to break out to a console (Alt-SysRq-R then Ctrl-Alt-F1).  It almost always corrupts the display, but you can get back into X without any trouble with startx.

The problem with that solution is that you may not the MSK enabled.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm going to have to write that key sequence down for the infrequent times ctrl-alt-bkspace doesnt work. Are there any other uses for sysrq?

Lotus, that should be enough memory though more wouldn't hurt. Has this started after installing or running any specific applications?

Link to post
Share on other sites

yeah, I plan to get a 512 stick soon, although maybe I can score more out of my parents for my birthday....hehe. Anyway, I haven't really installed any applications recently, and the only thing that's running is firefox...I don't know what the deal is.

Link to post
Share on other sites
I'm going to have to write that key sequence down for the infrequent times ctrl-alt-bkspace doesnt work. Are there any other uses for sysrq?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

It's described in sysrq.txt in the toplevel of the kernel docs tree. The form is Alt-SysRq-<key>. Quoting the docs

*  What are the 'command' keys?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'r'     - Turns off keyboard raw mode and sets it to XLATE.

'k'     - Secure Access Key (SAK) Kills all programs on the current virtual
         console. NOTE: See important comments below in SAK section.

'b'     - Will immediately reboot the system without syncing or unmounting
         your disks.

'o'     - Will shut your system off (if configured and supported).

's'     - Will attempt to sync all mounted filesystems.

'u'     - Will attempt to remount all mounted filesystems read-only.

'p'     - Will dump the current registers and flags to your console.

't'     - Will dump a list of current tasks and their information to your
         console.

'm'     - Will dump current memory info to your console.

'v' - Dumps Voyager SMP processor info to your console.

'0'-'9' - Sets the console log level, controlling which kernel messages
         will be printed to your console. ('0', for example would make
         it so that only emergency messages like PANICs or OOPSes would
         make it to your console.)

'e'     - Send a SIGTERM to all processes, except for init.

'i'     - Send a SIGKILL to all processes, except for init.

'l'     - Send a SIGKILL to all processes, INCLUDING init. (Your system
         will be non-functional after this.)

'h'     - Will display help ( actually any other key than those listed
         above will display help. but 'h' is easy to remember :-)

It has to be enabled in the kernel and not disabled in /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq. Note that you can do terrible things to your system with it.

Link to post
Share on other sites
I just noticed my laptop is extremely hot underneath, do you think that would make a difference?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

If you didn't notice it before it froze, it's probably a side-effect of (the cause of) the crash.

Link to post
Share on other sites
what is init exactly?  I think I have an idea of the concept but an explanation would do me good.... :D

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The init process manages system startup and shutdown. It's also ultimately responsible for terminal management, user logins and logouts, and daemon processes (background processes), among other things.

Edited by jcl
Link to post
Share on other sites

to add.. you do not have to wait for yoru batt to die.. just pull that out..

Link to post
Share on other sites
yeah so now this morning after letting it charge for a good 15 minutes it's not even turning on...good thing I bought the warranty on it, no?  Unless there's some trick I don't know about, I think it's dead.

Nevermind, it turned on. Weird.

Edited by lotus
Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...