LinuxQuestions.org - Verifying dmi pool data

One of the great things about linux is that you rarely ned to reboot it. If you are able to get to a shell through ctrl-alt-f2, then you can use that to kill the game, leaving everything else fine. Here are some possibilities:

I'll assume the game is named gamez for the purpose of this example.

When it crashes, again do ctrl+alt+f2, and then do this:

Code:

ps aux|grep gamez

That will give you a list of processes associated with the game. Once you have those numbers, you just kill the processes. As another example, here is a list of processes my machine runs evolution, so if I wanted to kill it, I'd get this list:

Code:

jim@jimsworktop:~$ ps aux|grep evolution

jim      4945  0.1 42.9 327112 110220 ?      Sl  Sep15  1:28 evolution --component=mail

jim      4951  0.0  0.6  72492  1752 ?        Sl  Sep15  0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server-1.6 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_DataServer_InterfaceCheck --oaf-ior-fd=24

jim      4954  0.0  0.8  34144  2188 ?        Sl  Sep15  0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.6/evolution-exchange-storage --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Exchange_Component_Factory:2.6 --oaf-ior-fd=26

jim      4970  0.0  0.9  65644  2372 ?        Sl  Sep15  0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.6/evolution-alarm-notify --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Calendar_AlarmNotify_Factory:2.6 --oaf-ior-fd=28

jim      9787  0.0  0.2  2976  660 pts/3    D+  13:33  0:00 grep evolution

Then if I wanted to kill evolution, I'd issue the command

Code:

kill -15 4945 4951 4954 4970

Then again do the ps aux|grep gamez. If it killed the game, the only answer will be the grep process. If it still lists actual processes, do the kill again, this time with -9 instead of -15 on any processes still running.

Once all that is done, the game should be dead. At that point, you can hit ctrl+alt+f7 to return to the X windows session. Should you return to X and it is still screwed up, then the problem is within X as opposed to the game. You can repeat the same process to close down X windows and restart it, or just sign in and type "startx" without quotes to begin a new X session. Avoid rebooting in general, it servers little purpose on a linux box.

Peace,
JimBass