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

[Stephen P. Villano]

On 9/21/13 10:29 PM, Stephen Worthington wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Sep 2013 12:20:32 -0400, you wrote:
>
>> 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?)
> This command should find which display manager is currently running:
>
> ps -e | grep dm
>
> New Mythbuntu installs seem to use lightdm rather than gdm these days.
> And it has been converted to an Upstart job.  When I was having VAAPI
> freeze on exit from playing a program, this worked for restarting X:
>
> restart lightdm
>
> But /etc/inid.d/lightdm restart should still work too.
>
>>>> 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
> For the purposes of debugging this, you might find it easier to log in
> to the MythTV box using ssh from another PC (laptop?) if you have one
> on the network, rather than having to use a Ctrl-Alt-Fx login as it is
> likely to give you a much larger screen to work with for looking at
> log files and so on.  Unless configured specially, Ctrl-Alt-Fx logins
> are usually set up to use a very small (but almost universally
> available) screen size like 800x600.  And the options to configure
> their size at boot time are arcane and on my system are also
> unreliable and depend on the connected monitor responding properly.  I
> have these two lines in /etc/default/grub:
>
> GRUB_GFXMODE=1280x1024x24
> GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=keep
>
> but they only work on some boots.
>
> If you do not have another Linux box with an ssh client installed, try
> Putty on Windows:
>
> http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/
> _______________________________________________
>

As I recall, putty was also available by port.
I just use regular ssh to either my root or my user account, depending
on my needs.
I considered exporting my X session, but decided not to as I use my
MacBook Pro over wireless. Thought about compressing it, but decided not
to due to the ancientness of my backend and its low amount of RAMBUS RAM.
RAMBUS: WTF were they thinking?!