Hi there

Coming from Windows I usually just pressed the power button whenever the system was completely stuck and no interaction was possible.

Doing that on an Ubuntu system is not a good idea I've learned. So what do you do if your system should hang and the keyboard is locked?

I've heard about accessing with telnet but dont really get how this is done?

Please enlighten me :-)

Thanks
G

Is it the keyboard or a system lock? The next time it locks press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace that will kill your xserver and put you back at the login screen.

You may want to check and see if you are having heat issues.

You are correct that you should only force power off if all other recovery attempts fail.

My first action is to press ctrl-alt-f1. That may get you to a virtual terminal with a cli logon prompt. Log on as root and try to find and kill the offending process. Use ps -A to find the pid if you know the name of the program. Or you can use top to find a process that is dominating the cpu etc.

My next action is to do the ctrl-alt-backspace. If that works, you should get to the login screen.

If ctrl-alt-f1 doesn't get to a virtual terminal, and ctrl-alt-backspace doesn't work, there is a trick called "skinny elephants". Google "skinny elephants" or "raising skinny elephants". You will get several hits that are relevant. Make a cheatsheet of the instructions you get. Keep the cheatsheet handy because you will not be able to google if your system is locked.

If the skinny elephants don't work, you have no choice but to force the system down.

Thanks a lot guys for the helpful answers.

The problem is that mouse and keyboard is locked. happend to me when trying to run a game (cant remember the name, some ego shooooter). dont know if it was only the keyboard, but I guess it had problems with the graphic. did a powerbuttonrestart and my gnome was all messed up after. luckily reinstall is piece of cake with ubuntu ;-) still annyoing though...

excited about the elephants ;-) big thanks for that... found this one I want to share here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key , check out the section about Remote access

How would you use telenet in the console?

just

telnet ipyouwanttocennectto

?
Thanks G

dickgregory, home and tried to pet the elephant here ;-) Unfortunately Ubuntu 9.04 mapped 'take a screenshot for me' on the SysRq/PrintScreen Key so instead of raising an elephant, the gnome-screenshot pops up. How to solve this? How could I change the key bindings for taking a screenshot?

Tried to remove gnome-screenshot and gnome-screenshot --window in the config editor, apps->metacity->keybinding_commands but changes seem not to work (also after rebooting).

thanks from here
G

Ok was able to solve the issue. Here what I had to so not to get gnome-screenshot when hitting the SysRq key (assuming you also have compiz installed):

1. start compiz config settings manager (cssm)
2. enable commands plugin (this stands between you and matacity keybindings ;-)
3. close ccsm
4. start gconf-editor
5. got to apps->metacity->global_keybindings
6. look for run_command_window_screenshot
7. change the value from <Alt>Print to lets say <Shift>Print
8. confirm with hitting enter key
9. SysReq key should now be usable (or at least after reboot)

Playing games with Linux is usually not a good idea. Stay with Windows for that kind of stuff. Most games are made with Windows in mind, that's why they work better over there.

Linux

That's why I just pointed you to google instead of trying to explain it all myself. There are a number of things that could affect the availability of the elephants, and I didn't want to guess at what would happen in your case. I'm glad you got it working, as indicated in your next post.

Thanks again guys :-)