{"id":129,"date":"2007-09-09T11:15:56","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T15:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2007\/09\/09\/the-magic-sysrq-key\/"},"modified":"2007-09-09T11:15:56","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T15:15:56","slug":"the-magic-sysrq-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/n1zyy\/2007\/09\/09\/the-magic-sysrq-key\/","title":{"rendered":"The Magic SysRq Key"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I came across (via Digg) some stuff on Linux’s Magic SysRq key<\/a>. I’m yet to be able to try it, but it’s apparently a low-level way of controlling the system when it goes haywire. You do need to enable<\/a> it in the kernel, but I’m under the impression it’s enabled by default*.<\/p>\n

I’ve been running Compiz on XGL, both of which are experimental software. Certain obscure combinations of activities will freeze it, and the system appears locked up. I strongly suspect that it’s not ‘truly’ frozen, though, but since it’s my user interface, short of pulling up another computer and remotely logging in, there’s not much I can do. Traditionally I just turn the machine off. The “REISUB” method will hopefully let you ‘cleanly’ shut down the system, by getting the kernel to terminate all processes, unmount disks, and then reboot.<\/p>\n

It looks like there’s more, though… You could regain control of the keyboard and then just kill everything on the current VT, in theory, at least, letting you just restart X.<\/p>\n