Raising Skinny Elephants Is So Utterly Boring
If you’re a Ubuntu/Debian user, and Gnome has crashed, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace & Ctrl-Alt-F1 are not working, apparently there are some further steps you can take before going for the power button and risking dataloss.
The first command to try is:
ALT + SysReq + k
That command is meant to kill all running processes, thereby terminating your session safely. But what’s that “SysReq” key? Look at your Print Screen key and you’ll find a second label on it.
What if stopping all system processes doesn’t do the trick?
If the above command doesn’t work, then try the following set of keystrokes, in order:
ALT + SysReq + r
This stands for Raw keyboard mode.
ALT + SysReq + s
This syncs the disk.
ALT + SysReq + e
This terminates all processes.
ALT + SysReq + i
Kill’s all processes that weren’t terminated nicely.
ALT + SysReq + s
This syncs the disk, again.
ALT + SysReq + u
Remounts all filesystems as read only.
ALT + SysReq + b
This last one will reboot the system.
Think you’ll have difficulty remembering all that? Well, there’s a mnemonic for memorizing it: Raising Skinny Elephants Is So Utterly Boring.
Edit: Thanks to commentor Bob/Paul for pointing out that disks should be synced again after terminating all processes. The mnemonic and title of the post have been updated to reflect this change. I suggest everyone read his comment since he suggests an alternate mnemonic and command sequence that only requires sync’ing disks once.
You list six keystrokes but only five explanations for them.
Fatman
June 13, 2008 at 4:54 am
Thanks for pointing that out, Fatman. I’ve added the sixth explanation (ALT + SysReq + b).
Sohail Mirza
June 13, 2008 at 9:09 am
I tried, but every time I press Alt + SysReq I get the window of the “Save a screenshot” (or whatever the English for it is …)
How do I solve this ??? (I typed ls /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq and this string appears : /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq so the key should be enabled …)
Daniele
December 9, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Daniele, you may want to try holding down Ctrl as well as Alt and SysReq.
I also get the “Save Screenshot” dialog when I only press Alt-SysReq. Strange that I’ve never noticed the same problem. I suspect that I may have been unconsiously using the Ctrl key as well, the whole time. 🙂
Sohail Mirza
December 9, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Don’t use Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring! You need to sync the disk immediately before rebooting. Acceptable accronyms are:
Raising Skinny Elephants Is So Utterly Boring
Reboot Even If System’s Utterly Broken
That is, you can sync as often as you want, but terminating applications with E and I are invariably going to cause changes to be written to the disk, which means you’re system cache will have dirty data that needs to be flushed!! Sync, Unmount, reBoot/shutdOwn.
Bob/Paul
December 21, 2008 at 3:04 pm