I have Fedora (not sure what version) installed on my work machine and it is generally pretty stable, but I have had a couple of issues lately that forced me to reboot. Twice I went to log in and incorrectly typed my password and whatever app that is hung while checking, and yesterday, everything ground to a halt and my mouse cursor stopped moving. I used to run Ubuntu and if there was an issue with the GUI, I could hit crtl-alt-F1 (I think) and it would drop me into the CLI. Is there an equivalent thing to do on Fedora?
With KDE, it’s ctrl+shift+F2. I think anyway. I always use ctrl+shift+alt+F2 because I can never remember the correct keys. I thought it worked for gnome too, but I could be wrong. Strange, I googled but don’t see this for gnome or kde in any keyboard shortcut lists.
CTRL+ALT+F1 (through F6) are standard on all distros I’ve used, and give you separate CLI logins on each. (F7 is the graphical screen, so you can jump back and forth among logins). I haven’t used Fedora since v4, and only used KDE once for a month or so a couple years ago, so I can’t speak to those specifically.
You can also use CTRL+ALT+Backspace to kill your X session (also standard functionality in Linux), giving you a new GUI login. I should note, however, that on Ubuntu 7.10, this actually didn’t reset X’s state, which required a reboot. They may have fixed it since then, and it may be different in Fedora.
CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE is disabled by default in recent versions of the x-server. You have to enable it in one of the config screens in Gnome.
You can also bring up a temrinal with CTRL+ALT+F1, login, and then restart x with:
sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
Yow, I had no idea. Thanks for pointing it out.
I think I tried crtl+alt+F1 when the login screen failed (this was the login screen that you get when the machine goes to sleep, not the one you get after booting) but no love.
Sounds like you might be having a kernel panic, which basically occurs when the kernel hits an unrecoverable error. They are pretty rare these days in the Linux kernel but I was getting them a few months back on my new laptop, so they still happen. It’s usually something completely edge-case that causes it… in my case it was using the Cisco VPN software when on WiFi with the specific chip-set I had that blew things up. On my system I would get the following symptoms in order:
- GUI and keyboard would lock
- Mouse would eventually freeze
- the caps-lock key flashes quickly (which is the way the kernel indicates what is going on)
The standard Ctrl-Alt-F1 wouldn’t do anything, and the only way out was reboot.
I know that there are usually some logs that the system will write before it locks that can point to the cause. Google “fedora kernel panic”. The other thing to do is make sure all your software is at the most recent version.
So it sounds like a suspend/hibernate problem. Wish I could help with that specifically, but I lack the personal experience. Some (very general) ideas on what to do:
Does your CapsLock or NumLock LED toggle on the keyboard? If not, the system is receiving no keyboard input; AFAIK, it’s then a lost cause. If so, your system is still “up”, which is a good thing.
Are you running an SSH server? Personally, I can’t imagine a system without (and in fact install Cygwin on any Windows box I maintain just for it), but YMMV. If you are, try to SSH in from another computer; you’ll have a CLI login as if you used CTRL+ALT+F1. At the very least, try to ping the machine to see if it responds.
For the most part, those (and the CTRL+ALT functions already mentioned) are the only general tips I have without knowing anything else about the system. Next up would be a trip to the log files (probably in the /var/log/messages file) to try to find what’s happening right before the lock-up to further diagnose the problem.
One more thing: if you still have keyboard input post-freeze, make sure and use the “magic SysRq keys” for a clean shutdown. Admittedly, the only lock-ups I’ve had in years utterly froze the system (bad memory, IIRC), making this useless.
And by ‘caps-lock key’ I actually mean ‘caps-lock indicator light’…