[Novalug] computer hangs up

[DonJr]

On Wed, 2008-02-27 at 21:05 -0500, maxpublic08 at maxwellspangler.com
wrote:
  <Snup some great ideas>

> 3a) Try  #  init 3    to force the system to shutdown X and related programs 
> and to go command line only mode.  After it says it's shutdown X, run top 
> again to see if any X programs are running, such as no X-windows but mozilla 
> or another X application is still running.  If so, kill -9 the application and 
> do #   init 5  to restart X and see if your display comes back up.

Only problem is this will only work if the system uses 'init' to
start/restart/stop the ?dm X login server.

Right now three of my five systems are currently running X-servers (in
one mode/form or the other) and all five are in "init level 2" mode. As
the X-login server is started just like any other service on those that
offer that service.

To STOP the [gkx]dm login server from a command window on a Ubuntu based
system it's:
   sudo invoke-rc.d gdm stop
                   /\ replacing the 'g'(gnome) with 'x'(xdm) or 'k'(KDE)
                      depending on what is installed

  Although this may have little effect until the "user" logs out.

  To just STOP/Logout a users X-session from a remote login session
it's:
   killall x-session-manager

and this should bring down the rest of that current x-session with it.
Anything left after a minute or so is most likely a good place to start
looking for the problem. Unless you know what caused the problem.

> I'll say right now that my system probably has 4-5 opportunities for the GUI 
> environment to lock up but leave the computer running.  Linux is good, but 
> it's still software and all software has flaws.. some enough to lock things 
> up.

I fully agree. While the combo of Linux and X11 is rebost and very hard
to LOCK-up it still just software and all software has flaws and/or
limits.

-- 
 DonJr