[ILUG] X hangs and rebooting

[Justin Mason]

Aaron McDaid said:

> > My linux machine has been rebooted about 5 times 
> > due to problems with X and various apps
> 
> I assume you're referring to a situation where you couldn't log out or stop
> X in a normal way
> 
> why? you shouldn't have to reboot because of that! if your window manager is
> hanging or whatever try Ctrl-Alt-Backspace. That'll kill X for you. 
> It's also possible to restore some sanity by going back to the console
> Ctrl-Alt-F1 and messing about there (it's the same as Alt-F1 or Alt-F2 to
> swap virtual consoles if you aren't in X) . Such as SIGKILL the wm and
> restart it (this keeps your X-apps your running). But that's getting a bit
> complicated.

I have to agree with Shane on this one -- there are certainly occasions
when X will completely hang, and Ctrl-Alt-Backsapce and Ctrl-Alt-F1
have no effect.

Generally I pop over to another machine, telnet in, and kill Netscape
at that point -- because Netscape is always the culprit!

Sometimes a killall -9 X is the only thing that'll do it.

In terms of the video card getting so screwed that it requires a
full reboot to clear it -- that's happened too.  generally it requires
some console gaming to really hose it, but it does happen.

--j.