In Windows, when your system hangs, you can always press Ctrl-Alt-Delete, wait for the Task Manager to open, and kill the process that doesn’t respond. However, Ctrl-Alt-Delete don’t always work the way you want it to leaving you no other option but to do a hard-reset, and perhaps as a result corrupt your data kissing your important files goodbye.In Linux, when your entire system freezes, there are plenty of safe ways to exit and get back on track immediately. Alt + SysRq + (a selection of other keys) will do the magic trick. Note: 'SysRq' key is equivalent to the 'Print Screen' key.
Alt + SysR + K
Kill all processes (including X), which are running on the currently active virtual console.
Alt + SysRq + E
Send the TERM signal to all running processes except init, asking them to exit.
Alt + SysRq + I
Send the KILL signal to all running processes except init.
Alt + SysRq + L
Send the KILL signal to all processes, including init.
Alt + SysRq + S
Run an emergency sync (cache write) on all mounted filesystems. This can prevent data loss.
Alt + SysRq + U
Remount all mounted filesystems as read-only. This has the same effect as the sync combination above, but with one important benefit: if the operation is successful, fsck won't have to check all filesystems after a computer hardware reset.
Alt + SysRq + R
Turn off keyboard raw mode. This can be useful when your X session hangs. After issueing this command you may be able to use .
Alt + SysRq + B
Reboot immediately without syncing or unmounting your disks. Using this, you will likely end up with filesystem errors, so this is not highly recommended.
Alt + SysRq + O
Shut the system off right away.
If all these ‘Alt + SysRq’ keyboard combo are hard to remember, you can press Alt + SysRq + H to display a helpful list of the shortcuts above.
A great way to use these keys is holding down Alt-SysRq while slowly typing REISUB (BUSIER backwards). This will reboot your system in a safe way (just look at the explanations above).
Also note: Alt-SysRq-H only helps you out in the command line.
I`ll stick with my MS Windows 95®
Although I use only 'SUB' and never had any problems.
From all the FUD I thought Linux NEVER froze up...
You all lied?
its
Raising
Elephants
Is
So
Utterly
Boring
Alt + SysReq + REISUB
I like the longer interval between those situations in Linux. But that means that I tend to forget how to get out of the jams.
For Fedora you need to use
AltGR + SysReq + ....
otherwise you get a print screen image dump window if you are running X.
Even
If
System
Utterly
Broken
From all the FUD I thought Linux NEVER froze up...
You all lied?"
Nope, you just didn't get it.
Linux, the kernel, does not crash. Only the applications crash. And since the kernel don't crash you can happily recover (by being able to reboot gracefully) from any application crash.
Of course, Linux does make a "kernel panic" in which most of the time hardware issues are to blame.
I have experienced kernel panics mostly when I am compiling my own kernel. While the BSODs simply became part of any Windows users daily routine.
My simple solution was ctrl-alt-backspace which restarts the x window session) (killing all child processes in the meantime - including the screen capture one).
I logged back in and was ready to carry on work again. The computer didn't ahve to be rebooted. All my drive mappings were still there.
I reopened firefox and all the pages I was reading were reloaded.
I reopened my music play and the song I was listening to was queued and ready to start playing again.
Total time - to productivity again - perhaps 15 seconds.
add this line to the end of /etc/sysctl.conf
kernel.sysrq = 1
then reboot.
For it to work properly, you need to press alt+sysrq simultaneously, then press your exit code (eg k) while holding the other keys down.
Windows freeze for no reason, even bythemselves.
There is no such thing as "unfreezable" system.
But lets say that one new computer user can harm Windows much more easily than a linux distribution...
All the above in my opinion of course..
As if the common user would know why his Linux box freezes!
Yes Virginia there Really Are WindBlows FanBoys.