[techtalk] tty lockup

Conor Daly conor.daly at oceanfree.net
Fri Mar 9 20:46:34 EST 2001


On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 10:13:20AM -0500 or so it is rumoured hereabouts, 
David Merrill thought:
> On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 02:56:45PM +0000, James A. Sutherland wrote:
> > On Fri, 9 Mar 2001, David Merrill wrote:
> > 
> > > On Fri, Mar 09, 2001 at 02:32:51PM +0000, James A. Sutherland wrote:
> > > > Can you switch from one VC (virtual console) to another? Did you have the
> > > > "Magic Alt+SysRq" support included in the kernel? If so, can you do an
> > > > SAK? (Alt+SysRq+K - kills all processes on the current VC, which should
> > > > give you a clean login screen.)
> > >
> > > I cannot. I don't have the magic sysrq enabled, not being a kernel
> > > hacker and not expecting to need it. That'll larn me.
> > 
> > Alt+SysRq can be very useful in tight corners like this... I had Adobe
> > Acrobat Reader blow up on me recently, taking out X in the process. A
> > quick SAK later, and a few minutes of disk thrashing, and everything was
> > back to normal!
> > 
> > > Hmmm. I just had the thought that I might try resetting the runlevel.
> > > Is that reasonable, or madness?
> > 
> > Could try that, yes... Can you switch VC's, though?
> 
> Nope. Okay, I'll try it from the local console tonight. Thanks!
> 
Or you could try from your remote login (untested)

telinit 1; sleep 10; telinit 3

Testing.....

Yup, that worked.

RH 6.2

You gotta do it on a single line with semicolons though since you'll lose
your connection once the box goes to single user mode.  Once it goes to
single user and then back to a normal runlevel, it'll start up anything
that should be running for that level.  Pity "telinit <current runlevel>"
doesn't restart everything or, at least, start anything that isn't running
and should be.
-- 
Conor Daly <conor.daly at oceanfree.net>

Domestic Sysadmin :-)
---------------------
Faenor.cod.ie
  8:34pm  up 10 days,  7:09,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

Hobbiton.cod.ie
  7:37pm  up 10 days,  5:47,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00




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