After exiting Xwindows(hadn't noticed anything different
about the exit) I couldn't restart it:

$startx

produced, among other messages:

"fatal server error"
"cannot establish listening socket ..."

netstat -l
shows a socket X0 in /tmp/.X11-unix

how do I really shut it down so I can restart it?

Within X, you can do a ctrl-alt-backspace to restart it, if it says it is already running, try switching to it by doing a ctrl-alt-F7, i think this will at least get you back into X, if not from the command you can issue the top command, find the pid and then issue the kill command to kill X, then try to restart it that way.

OMG I know this one!
 

Hi I get this same problem. I found a solution for desperation. Probably not the correct way but it allows me to reboot. Type in this : shutdown -r now It works for me. Oh hey been on linux for 4 days so if it isn't right forgive me. Liz

[Edited by elizabetheanera on 05-18-2001 at 11:41 AM]

Well, your right on the shutdown -r now but he wanted to know how to restart X without you know, rebooting the machine. But yeah, I usually tend to reboot my Windows machine to resolve most problems, but once you get the hang of it, you can always work around a reboot in Linux.

you can either (from the console) press alt-f7 to get back to X then press , as almighty moderator trickykid said, ctrl-alt-backspace. if that doesnt then try 'ps -e' to show all the processes and their pid's then 'kill <pid>'

if it still won;t die then send it the signal nine which will oblitarate it : 'kill -9 <pid>'

im not sure if this will work but to get it to restart you could try 'kill -HUP <pid>' . i know that that gets it to re-read its config files

Alex

P.S. how bout doing 'init 3' to go to console mode then do 'init 5' to go back. it should kill things as it changes