[Wolves] PC LOCK UP

[James Turner]

On Sunday 11 Jan 2004 9:21 am, sparkes wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-01-11 at 09:13, Mo Awkati wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > Yet another question!!
> >
> > If an application locks the keyboard and mouse, how
> > can I kill it to get the PC back without having to
> > reset the PC??
>
> If the keyboard and mouse are really locked up then there is little you
> can do.
>
> Sometimes X gives the impression that it has locked up when it hasn't
> really.  If this is the case hitting ctrl-alt-backspace a few times
> should restart X in a messy fashion.

I realise it isn't exactly the answer to your problem, but it might be useful 
to know that you can kill a hung application under KDE by pressing 
CTRL+ALT+ESC then clicking on its window. (Press CTRL+ALT+ESC a second time 
to cancel if you change your mind).

> If you can get to another virtual console you can find the app that is
> playing up and kill it.  look at 'man ps' and 'man kill' for a few ideas
> on how you can sort this out.

To get to another virtual console, CTRL+ALT+F1, CTRL+ALT+F2, CTRL+ALT+F3, etc. 
The default setup on most machines is to display a (textual) console login 
prompt on each of consoles 1-6 and the X Window System on console 7, though 
as with pretty much everything, this can be configured as required.

> > Also, if I am running two sessions and I want to
> > terminate one of the sessions how do I do it? Do I
> > just log off, if I do that it prompts me to sign in as
> > another user.
>
> that means you have terminated the sessions.  Linux is a true multiuser
> environment you have terminated a session when you log out letting
> another user log in on that terminal.

I would guess Mo's typed a command such as "w", "who" or "finger" to list the 
logged in users... Each console login, remote login, and terminal window (or 
each tab of terminal windows such as konsole or gnome-terminal) counts as a 
seperate user as far as these commands are concerned.

(for the inquisitive, this works by storing and retrieving login information 
in the /var/run/utmp and/or /var/run/wtmp files)

James