[Wolves] PC LOCK UP

[Aquarius]

Mo Awkati spoo'd forth:
> Hi
> Thanks for the advice folk. I don't think I'll try
> XDoom for now until I have had more experience. I will
> make a note of the other options for reference when I
> am stuck. My pc has got a reset button but I am not
> sure if using it will damage the kernel?

Psdoom wasn't a serious suggestion on Fizzy's part; it's a silly hack
that allows you to walk around in a Doom level and shoot monsters that
represent the programs running on your computer. :-)

Don't just hit the reset button if you can avoid it; Linux normally
recovers pretty well, but, in general, modern machines (running
whatever operating system) don't cope well with just having the power
cut off. If your graphical interface freezes up, try the following:

Hit Ctrl+Alt+F1. This should take you to a text console -- a black
screen with white writing and no pretty graphics. Log in as root, and
try "killall X".
If that doesn't work, try connecting to your machine from another
machine on your LAN. You will need an SSH server running on your
machine for this trick; that's often useful anyway to get remote access
to your machine. If this works, then log in and kill X as above.
If you don't *have* other LAN machines, or SSH is unresponsive, then
try the Magic SysRq Key Combination. Someone else needs to fill in the
information here (and when they do I shall read it too :)).
If all the above don't work, press the reset button.
If that doesn't work, press the power button.
If that doesn't work, kill the power at the wall.
 
> On the subject of damage to the kernel, do I need to
> get myself an antivirus software?? I just feel naked
> (no jokes :-) ) without it.

No. There aren't really any viruses for Linux, for a number of reasons
which I won't go into (although we can cover that somewhere else if
you'd like to know more about it), so you don't need "protection" from
something that doesn't exist.

Aq.

-- 
Java sucks. [...] Java on TV set top boxes will suck so hard it
might well inhale people from off  their sofa until their heads
get wedged in the card slots.         --- Jon Rabone, ucam.chat