[NTLUG:Discuss] How to revive local console

[Michael Barnes]

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 7:59 AM, terry<trryhend at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 7:51 AM, terry<trryhend at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 12:52 PM, Michael Barnes<barnmichael at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I'm running Ubuntu 9.04.  Sometimes I leave it for 10-20 minutes (or
>>> more) and when I come back, the screen saver is frozen and everything
>>> seems to be locked up on the local console.  However, everything seems
>>> to be running.  I can ssh in from another machine and all looks OK.
>>> I've tried killing things off to try to get the local console back to
>>> no avail.
>>>
>>> Any ideas on how I can revive the local console without rebooting the
>>> machine?  When I kill the screen saver, the screen generally goes
>>> black.  Even if I can get it to come back to a login or something.
>>>
>>> Thanks for any comments.
>>>
>>> Michael
>>>
>>
>>
>> When you ssh in, try killing / restarting the X server, (which is what
>> appears to be locking up).
>>  /etc/init.d/gdm stop ;  /etc/init.d/gdm  start
>> or
>>  /etc/init.d/gdm restart
>>
>> I assume you are running gnome, but; If you are running KDE:
>>  /etc/init.d/kdm restart
>>
>> Before that, it might be interesting to poke around a bit to see
>> what's happening. I'd first see if the system resources are running
>> low.
>>  top
>> If you look at the top consumers of resources, you may be able to find
>> the problem.  It might also be time to test your memory. There could
>> be something wrong with the screensaver application, but I doubt it.
>>
>> I suppose it could also have something to do with the display adapter
>> or the kernel module that is running it.
>> Just out of curiosity, what video card do you have? And what driver
>> are you using for it?
>>
>
>
> If the screensaver is looking your system up, why not just turn it off?
>
>

The computer is a stock Dell Optiplex 745.  I'm not sure what video
card it is using, but it is one specifically for dual DVI monitors.
As far as drivers go, I just installed a generic Ubuntu download for
8.10, which it self upgraded to 9.04.  I probably will go ahead and
disable the screen saver.  I really don't need it on this machine.
But, I must admit, there are some really magnificent patterns and
colors in this collection of screen savers.

I've gone in and looked with top a couple times when this has
happened.  Nothing seems to be locked or hogging resources.  The
screensaver just stops and nothing seems to wake it up or close it.
Killing the screensaver doesn't help.  Restarting gdm doesn't seem to
do anything either.

Maybe it's the video card.  Can it be "restarted" or reinitialized so
to speak?  Although I would think restarting gdm should do that.

Thanks for the continued ideas.

Michael