[Techtalk] System running, but unresponsive

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

David Sumbler wrote:

> I have an elderly friend who no longer has a car and can walk very
> little.  Without her computer, she is rather cut off.
 
> I had a letter from her this morning (by post) saying that her
> computer (a laptop with Ubuntu 10.04) is not functioning, and
> briefly describing the symptoms.  She had updated some software
> using Update Manager and the computer needed to be rebooted.  But
> after the reboot the computer would not respond to the keyboard nor
> to mouse clicks.
 
> I can still ssh to her computer, and I can see her desktop using
> Remote Desktop Viewer; but sure enough, although I can move the
> mouse pointer, the computer is otherwise unresponsive.

Since you can ssh in, can you type commands and move around through
her file system?

If so, you might want to take a look at her logs in the /var/log
directory (I would probably look at /var/log/syslog first, and check
others if you don't find anything). Maybe something in those will
tell you exactly what happened so you have a better idea what might
fix it.

Something you could try (but not until after you do whatever
sleuthing you can, because for all I know you could make things
worse) is to run sudo apt-get update for her if you've got
administrative rights to her computer. Perhaps whatever interrupted
or messed up her update will correct itself if the update is allowed
to run again.

Another thing you could try (also not until after you've done
whatever sleuthing you can) is renaming these in her home directory:

.gnome
.gnome2
.gconf
.gconfd
.metacity

To these:

.TESTgnome
.TESTgnome2
.TESTgconf
.TESTgconfd
.TESTmetacity

When she reboots her computer, that should reset Gnome to its default
state. I have no idea whether it would mess up some of her settings
for Gnome software, but if she can't use the computer at all now,
being able to use it and having to redo a few settings is probably
eminently better. (:

Another thing you could try is to have her choose a different kernel
from the GRUB menu (she needs to hold the Shift key during boot if it
doesn't show up automatically, and use the arrow keys and Enter key
to make the choice, but if it's not responding to key presses, that
might not be possible) to see whether she can still get in and use her
system. I'm not a hundred percent sure where to go from there if she
can, but someone else in here might know, and at least she'd be able
to use and/or back up the computer until further action is taken to
solve the problem.

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.