Couldn't switch to console from failed X??
 

OK, so yesterday while in the midst of getting 2.6.17.13-generic up and running I had a couple of instances where the X server failed to start (default runlevel 4) because I had to sort out Synaptics and the NVIDIA driver. I made the mistake on one occassion of Ctrl-Alt-F7-ing over to the failed X (I don't know why), but then I found I couldn't get back to a tty to try to make a fix to the problem and either restart X or reboot nicely. Ctrl-Alt-F6 did nothing. Nor did Ctrl-Alt-Bkspc (not surprisingly as X didn't manage to start). I found myself with no choice but to hard power down which caused all kinds of fsck errors on reboot (of a severity that it dumped me into an administrative prompt to manually fsck and ignorantly attempt to answer it's questions about what inodes to fix and delete).

At this point, I was sure there was no way the system would boot again, but it did and I eventually got up and running. However, some of the fsck fixes clearly corrupted some things (lost my Firefox Bookmarks, for example) and while I haven't noticed any system weirdness yet, I am near certain there are now some bugaboos lurking where files have been corrupted that are going to bite me in the butt eventually.

So, my questions to the community:

1) Has anyone else found themselves in a situation where they were unable to Ctrl-Alt-F? to a console. I've never had that problem on previous Slacks or other distros. tty6 has always been there for me and I was shocked when I couldn't get to it. I can only think that the keymap for the X display console somehow got hosed.
2) Is there something else I could have done when I found myself unable to get to a console to safely shutdown or prevent the errors resulting from powering down while the fs was still mounted? Some secret key combination I don't know or something.

FWIW, Dell Inspiron 8200, Slack 11, ext3 filesystem

Thanks,

Dave

You could compile sysreq into your kernel which will get you out most of the time, if you can remember how to use it.

I have had that experience. In most cases I am able to go to another computer on my network and ssh into the seemingly hung machine and kill stuff nicely before rebooting it through the ssh session.

if CTRL-ALT-DEL doesn't work, CTRL-ALT-F? either, can't ssh into the box, then try Raising Skinny Elephants, It's Utterly Boring.

(that sysrq thing, less than 3 post, no linky to wikipedia...)

@Mortus Canis: likewise. I hate to reboot.

Now I know theres a lot going on and people has lost confidence in reiser but really I have found reiserfs to be the most reliable filesystem I've come accross. It has never let me down in odd crashes.
Something to look at.

Crashes of X are what taught me to use reiserfs also. I've never had any corruption whatsoever, even after hundreds of crashes when doing weird development stuff!
Anyway sysrq is an advanced kernel feature which must be compiled in. If X doesn't respond you push CTRL+ALT+SCROLL and then you have 2-3 seconds in which you can give a selection of commands. I have used it before, but not lately.

Thanks for the tips. I had seen the Sysrq thing when I've compiled kernels in the past, but never considered compiling it in. Now I get it. :) Whenever I get around to building a kernel I'll keep that in mind.

Sounds like Reiserfs may be worth a look, too. Not that I'm in any real hurry right now to wipe my partition and start over.

Anywho, thanks for the responses.

Dave