[olug] My console has fallen and it can't get up

[dbw]

Jason,

You referred to Quote:("Magic SysReqKey" compiled in).  Is this something 
I would have had to configure manually or would RH have pre-configured 
this by default?  I know I did not compile in anything like that 
manually so it would only be there if it was there by default.  After 
looking in /Documentation I did not see anything about “SysReqKey”.
I am unfamiliar with this, could you please elaborate?

"puzzled at home.com" <puzzled at home.com> ,

I would like to try these "keyboard" methods, but as I stated in 
my first message, the keyboard does not respond.  (Please see prior 
message for details)  I know I made mention of it more than once,
and on one occasion I mentioned that CNTRL-ALT-DELETE did not even 
work.

ktb <x.y.f at home.com> ,

This falls under “preventative medicine” and I definitely agree with 
you; I guess I learned my lesson.  Xwindows may very well be the 
culprit since it was left running and now the console is frozen with 
the Xwindows screen saver being the only thing visible.  It just 
seems odd that I cannot access the other consoles.  The keyboard,
although connected and lit (the lights), is completely unresponsive.
It does not even allow me to change caps lock state.

Thank you for the URL to the article.  Incidentally, I did actually 
have the -nolisten specified for Xwindows so the outside world wouldn't 
see the port listening while I was in an X session.

Also, you mentioned "ssh" and I believe if I had that service running 
I would be able to access the server.  My hesitation on installing 
any type of remote access including even the secure shell manifested 
from the last ssh exploit reported on linuxsecurity.com  As you said,
if I could configure that to listen only to my private LAN theoretically 
this would be secure, but I still have hesitation.  But right now 
I am wishing that I had a secure shell to log into.

Mike McNally,

Again, I would like to kill X or whatever but the keyboard does not 
respond.  If I could only get to a shell :o)

I kind of remember something like this happening to me on a slackware 
linux workstation at home while running Netscape as you said.  

The Xwindows screen saver is history, I am not going to trust it 
anymore, especially on a production server.


 it’s pretty much looking like a cold hard reboot is the only solution 



,unless I just let the box run as it is, since it is working (from 
the perspective that the ipchains and tcp stuff is functioning.  
Eventually, I will need to do something because I need to add a couple 
rules on the ipchains I have running.  I doubt this has anything 
to do with an exploit or compromised box but not being able to look 
into it makes me uneasy.

Anyway, thanks everyone!

-dbw

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At Wednesday, 31 January 2001, you wrote:

>Sure this happens all the time, but nobody is going to admit it.
>I find that xscreensaver usually has a module or two that will
>lock up your display, after it goes beserk.  Netscape can do it as
>well, or at least it used to.  I quit using xscreensaver as it's
>just not worth my time to figure out how to make it quit
>misbehaving.  And if netscape starts to make your box do the death
>grind you have to quickly get to another terminal grep the ps id 
>of netscape and kill -9 it.  
>
>What you need to do is kill Xwindows.  I think you can kill the 
>bash shell that Xwindows was started or spawned from.
>
>crtl-alt-F1
>ps ax | grep bash
>kill -9 { pid of the spawning bash shell }
>
>-- 
>
>Mike McNally		mmcnally3 at prodigy.net
>
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