Linux froze completely - how do you get of it?

M

MrCrispy

2[H]4U
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
3,961
I have Arch Linux (via Antergos) KDE on my laptop, ita a fresh install. It froze completely today, I was just browsing. I could move my cursor but nothing was responding, no alt-tab etc.

I remembered Linux has multiple terminals so I did Ctrl-Alt-F2 and had a new prompt. In it I logged in using my name/pwd. Then what? I could do 'top' but nothing was taking up cpu. My guess is that X must have crashed?

I tried to switch back to main session (which is tty1 yes?) by doing Ctrl-Alt-F1, that just showed me a black screen with 'starting 238' which is a message I see scrolling on startup.

In desperation I did Ctrl-Alt-Del. that scrolled some more msgs which seemed like a system crash? Or shutdown? I don't know how to get out of this. Had to do a hard reboot.
 
been a while, but ctrl-alt-backspace used to be an X thing. Would restart the X-server iirc
 
Pretty sure it would be Ctrl-Alt-F7 to go back to your X running GUI terminal.
One tip... w I am pretty sure 7 should be your graphical... but the w command will list all logged in users and which TTY they are on.

If you got to a terminal... simplest fix would have simply been to type reboot.

If it was X that failed. Your to a terminal trick would allow you I believe restart x;

cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager

Should tell you which display manager to restart.

Unless you changed something (or Antergros doesn't install lightdm if you install KDE)

sudo restart lightdm

Figuring out what happened... logs should be in /var/log Unless for some reason you switched your display manager to GDM the gnome default in which case anything relevant will be in with the systemd logs.
 
[ctrl], [alt] & [backspace] should kill X and take you back to the GUI login prompt shouldn't it? Or is that just an Ubuntu thing?
 
Mazzspeed said:
[ctrl], [alt] & [backspace] should kill X and take you back to the GUI login prompt shouldn't it? Or is that just an Ubuntu thing?
Click to expand...
That is enabled only in a select group of distros. Won't necessarily work.

My guess is that the graphics driver is unstable and it freezes after some time on the desktop. Has happened to me also in the past when using arch based distros.
 
If KDE is installed you are most likely using sddm as your display manager. So, in a separate terminal try sudo systemctl restart sddm.service

That should restart the display manager, and in turn X.
 
I wouldn't recommend an arch based distro to any beginner. They require expertise, even the so called easy ones like Manjaro.

Mint, Ubuntu Mate, Kubuntu etc. are noob friendly distros. IIRC the stable-at-first then freeze issue had something to do with high resolution timer. Try disabling that in your UEFI/BIOS.
 
B00nie said:
I wouldn't recommend an arch based distro to any beginner. They require expertise, even the so called easy ones like Manjaro.

Mint, Ubuntu Mate, Kubuntu etc. are noob friendly distros. IIRC the stable-at-first then freeze issue had something to do with high resolution timer. Try disabling that in your UEFI/BIOS.
Click to expand...

I know hardened Linux sysadmins that use Ubuntu on their daily machines as it just works with minimal intervention.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top