[PLUG] X server wedged, how to close shells gracefully (as possible)

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Russell" == Russell Senior <seniorr at aracnet.com> writes:

Russell> I have a longrunning X server wedged with some xterms open on
Russell> it.  I'd like to recover the command histories from the
Russell> shells in the xterms. How?  I tried (with test shells)
Russell> killing with various likely signals, and they didn't save the
Russell> histories before dying.  I tried to kill -SEGV but couldn't
Russell> find the core files if they were created.

Russell> Any clues?

Ahh.  I got my xserver back.  There were two running, on :0 and :1.
Something went haywire with the one on :1 (vague anecdotal association
is running acroread within mozilla).  The something prevented me from
switching virtual consoles.  From another machine, I was able to kill
the :1 xserver (my wife's, heh).  The server on :0 was still runnning
but I couldn't switch to it.  I had tried an Alt-SysRq-r with no
visible effect.  From the other machine, I eventually discovered that
the keyboard on the "frozen" machine was working (I started a process
that I could see from the remote machine).  I realized that I was
typing into a shell, even though I couldn't see anything but a
corrupted version of the xserver on :0.  So, I exited the shell and,
presto, I could change virtual consoles again.  Woohoo!

-- 
Russell Senior         ``I have nine fingers; you have ten.''
seniorr at aracnet.com