[vox-tech] RH keeps crashing

[Richard S. Crawford]

At 11:55 AM 4/22/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Again, by "froze up" you probably mean that the graphical interface was
>unresponsive.  There are other things one needs to do to know for sure
>that the kernel has crashed.  Often, X will crash, giving a user at the
>console the impression that the machine has "crashed," when in fact
>the kernel and most other things are still working fine--that's one of
>the benefits of unix.  Secret keystroke:  ctrl-alt-backspace will attempt
>to kill the X server.  Often, it will succeed, dumping you back at your
>login prompt.  If it does not, it's good to attempt to ping the machine
>from another place on the network (assuming you are networked).
>If you can ping it, you can often use telnet/ssh to access the machine,
>then kill X/restart the machine/stop offending process (netscape?) etc.
>A last resort option, still much preferred to pressing the reset button,
>is the magic sys request key (a separate topic--anyone?).

Thanks for the tip.  I'll remember that.  As it is, I'm unable to ping, 
browse to, ssh to, tel-net to, telepathically link to, or otherwise 
communicate with the machine.  I'll try smoke signals next.

I have had to reinstall X on this machine before, so I have wondered about 
its stability.  I think the issue is probably deeper than that at the 
moment, but I'll try ctrl+alt+backspace this evening at home.


>I'll emphasize that what others are saying about checking logs, using
>dmesg, etc. is very important for understanding the cause.

Point taken.  Heh.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer Linux over Windows, FWIW.  It's so 
much easier to find out what went wrong and fix it.  A few keystrokes in 
Linux can be just as good as an entire re-install in Windows. ;-)