What to do when LINUX crashes?
 

I'm sure this is a really stupid question but what should I do when LINUX crashes?

I am very very new to LINUX but my boyfriend is pretty good and we have a RedHat 7 box which I have learned to switch on (!) and use to surf the internet using Mozilla on XWindows.

From time to time it crashes - apparently this is caused by a particular screen saver - when it is not being used. Usually my boyfriend has to come and sort it out for me. However - disaster! - he isn't here and the machine just crashed.

I pushed every key combination I can think of but nothing happened. The frozen screen saver just remained on the screen. In desparation I pushed the reset button on the front of the box.

It all seems OK now - I am logged on and can use the Internet, play games, start a text console etc. but I have two questions :

1) What should I have done when it froze up?
2) Is there anything I could usefully do now to patch it up?
During start up I did see some messages flash up indicating that it knows it hasn't properly shut down but I wasn't quick enough to see what I should do.

Thank you for your help,
Robin

Now I feel like a really pathetic girly!!

When my system hangs I generally blamb the hardware.

Would you happen to have an Athlon CPU?

http://www.gentoo.org/news/20020123-amd-news.html

Not to sound like a smart ass so please excuse me. Linux hasn't actually crashed it may be your browser or Xwindows but all you need to do to restart Xwindows is hold down CTRL, ALT, and BACKSPACE.
I thought the same thing once but a good friend of mine told me that Linux isn't like Windows and if Windows crashes you need to reboot the whole box in most cases. Not so with Linux from what I am learning.

Actually Ctrl + Alt + backspace will abort X. Or Ctrl + Alt + F2 will bounce you to another tty session and you can logon as root, use top or whatever to kill the hung screensaver. Logout of that session and Ctrl + Alt + F7 would take you back to X.

And if it's an Athlon append mem=nopentium in your bootloader might cure the hang ;)

And if all the above fails the last resort is to push reset button, and I suspect the Advance Power Management or ACPI is causing such a headache.

The problem may be with the screen saver . the screen saver of kde 2 is buggy and it hangs the system sometimes. then the only method to over this is not to use the screen saver.

i heared that kde3 fixed this screensaver bug