[mythtv-users] Blue screen of death. [1st of 2 questions]

[Eric Sharkey]

On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 1:25 AM, Leif Pihl <leif at pihl.us> wrote:
>> Did you try ctrl-alt-F1?
>
> Yea, that worked.  I was able to get into the command line mode, and Ctrl-Alt-F7 got me back into the graphics mode, such as it was, with the Blue Screen.

Ok, if you're able to get to command line mode, there may be things
you can do to recover the machine into working order without actually
rebooting.

The first thing I'd do is log in as root and see what the system is
actually doing when it's in this state.  You can use the command "top"
to show system activity.  Is the machine mostly idle or is some
process active, and if so which ones?

If it's the mythtv frontend process which has locked up you could try
killing just that one process.

I don't use Mythbuntu, so I'm not familiar with the details of how
it's set up.  If it uses gdm or gdm3 to start the initial X session,
you could also run, as root:

/etc/init.d/gdm3 restart

which should restart X.  (Can any Mythbuntu user on this list confirm
that's the correct command?)

>> Alt-PrintScreen-b?
>
> This worked, and did end up rebooting the machine.

Just be careful with that one.  It's a fast reboot.  If you use it, I
recommend using Alt-PrintScreen-s (sync filesystems), then
Alt-PrintScreen-u (unmount filesystems) before doing the boot.

Eric