[PLUG] Adding USB card reader hangs machine, sometimes

Robert Citek robert.citek at gmail.com
Wed Dec 26 15:13:50 UTC 2007


On Dec 26, 2007 7:23 AM, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:
> ... However, I have had a couple of
> instances when my server/workstation would lock up totally: no pointer
> movement via keys or trackball, keyboard totally unresponsive, could not
> kill the X server.
>
> In both cases, I fired up my notebook and ssh'd into the box to kill X
> remotely. That worked just fine.

I find this one of the most annoying features of Linux:

1) that X is the most fragile component of Linux
2) that the out-of-band solution when X locks up is to ssh into the machine

I've found myself in plenty of situations where the kernel and all
other processes were running just fine but X hung and that it was
faster to turn off the machine than to connect another machine.  You'd
think there would be some keyboard mechanism to by-pass whatever
driver X is using to grab the keyboard so that you can get a virtual
terminal and reset X.

Or is there one and I'm unaware of it?

Regards,
- Robert



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