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AM_SOS
June 9th, 2010, 08:32 PM
hi all,

this is about my ubuntu 9.10 finally becoming unstable enough for even force quit to stop working.
well i use Ubuntu for everyday usage and have never had the OS freezing on me since the last 2 years or so. on the few occasions that there were problems, force quit was able to deal with the issue quite effectively.
however, this recent OS freeze happened when i was using firefox with transmission seeding in the background. ok, let me admit at the outset i had something like 6 - 8 tabs opened in 4 different firefox browser windows.
so all of a sudden the system just froze and it was so bad that i couldn't even use force quit as the entire panel had also frozen.
eventually i was able to log out using alt + F4 and restarting. however, although firefox started ok when i booted back in, the system restarted on its own within a few minutes and without any warning !

which leads me to the query - is there any other way in which one can use the otherwise effective force quit application ? i mean how to use it if the panel itself freezes ?

second, does this OS crash after more than 6 months of stable use indicate something about the general system health ? or is just one of those occasional problems one need not worry about ?

looking out for some useful tips on these topics !
thanks !

AM_SOS
June 9th, 2010, 08:33 PM
hi all,
this is about my ubuntu 9.10 finally becoming unstable enough for even force quit to stop working.
well i use Ubuntu for everyday usage and have never had the OS freezing on me since the last 2 years or so. on the few occasions that there were problems, force quit was able to deal with the issue quite effectively.
however, this recent OS freeze happened when i was using firefox with transmission seeding in the background. ok, let me admit at the outset i had something like 6 - 8 tabs opened in 4 different firefox browser windows.
so all of a sudden the system just froze and it was so bad that i couldn't even use force quit as the entire panel had also frozen.
eventually i was able to log out using alt + F4 and restarting. however, although firefox started ok when i booted back in, the system restarted on its own within a few minutes and without any warning !

which leads me to the query - is there any other way in which one can use the otherwise effective force quit application ? i mean how to use it if the panel itself freezes ?

second, does this OS crash after more than 6 months of stable use indicate something about the general system health ? or is just one of those occasional problems one need not worry about ?

looking out for some useful tips on these topics !
thanks !

sanderd17
June 9th, 2010, 08:35 PM
duplicate of http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1505785

dabl
June 9th, 2010, 08:38 PM
Happily, true system "lockups" or "crashes" are pretty rare with Linux, but apparent lockups in which the screen goes black and/or the mouse and keyboard stop responding can happen - that is actually a crash of the X server only, or possibly some other process has run amok and is consuming 100% of the CPU resource. If, immediately preceding the lockup you did NOT see a "kernel panic" message, then it is probably not a system crash, and you (and your filesystem) will have a brighter future if you will execute a graceful shutdown and reboot. Here is what to do.

First, the mnemonic to remember:

Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring

BEFORE you reach for that power switch, give the Alt-SysRq combo a chance to do a graceful shutdown/reboot. Press and hold down "Alt-SysRq" ("SysRq" is the key otherwise known in DOS-world as "PrtScn", normally near the right end of the top row of keys) and then, one at a time, S-L-O-W-L-Y in sequence, " r s e i u b ".

Probably you will be amazed to see your "locked up" system do a shutdown and normal reboot.

Reference: http://linuxgazette.net/issue81/vikas.html

cariboo
June 9th, 2010, 09:25 PM
Please don't create multiple threads on the same subject, I have merged your two threads.

AM_SOS
June 10th, 2010, 08:05 AM
yep, sorry !

AM_SOS
June 10th, 2010, 08:06 AM
thanks a lot, dabl . pretty useful. will try this the next time i am in a fix !