From owner-freebsd-questions Mon Jul 28 20:15:44 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA01098 for questions-outgoing; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 20:15:44 -0700 (PDT) Received: from stcgate.statcan.ca (stcgate.statcan.ca [142.206.192.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA01092 for ; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 20:15:40 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from root@localhost) by stcgate.statcan.ca (8.6.11/8.6.9) id XAA25497; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 23:17:34 -0400 Received: from stcinet.statcan.ca(142.206.128.146) by stcgate via smap (V1.3) id sma025469; Tue Jul 29 03:16:37 1997 Received: from statcan.ca by statcan.ca (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4) id XAA06574; Mon, 28 Jul 1997 23:16:10 -0400 Date: Mon, 28 Jul 1997 23:13:46 -0400 (EDT) From: Mike Jeays X-Sender: jeays@austral To: Doug White cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Crashed X-server In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > Also, you can use Cntl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server, or hit > Cntl-Alt-F1 to get your console back. Then kill xdm or X and you should > be OK. > Thanks for the advice, and re-assurance that the /stand directory looks OK. My X-server crashes much harder than this - it becomes entirely non-responsive to all key combinations that I have ever tried, including the ones you suggest. I believe the OS is still running in the background, but is entirely inaccessible. Does this seem plausible? I reported a similar problem with Xperfmon++ a while ago; it caused similar crashes. Jordan thought I had run out of swap space, and that FreeBSD was still running. I have now put a cron task to write the current date and time into a file every minute. If I get another crash, I will wait a few minutes, reboot, and see if the OS was in fact still running.