Linux – What to do when the desktop freezes

display-managerfreezelinux-mintreboot

I am on Linux Mint 17. I experienced an unexpected software failure.

The desktop did not respond to anything.

As I am inexperienced, I only managed to switch to the console using CTRL+ALT+F1 and then restart the machine using:

reboot

Is there a more appropriate procedure?

Best Answer

Update 2018-Apr-15

As of Linux Mint 18 there has been a move to LightDM display manager, which you can restart as follows:

sudo service lightdm restart

Original

Running reboot is a perfectly safe way of doing it. If you just wanted to log out (restart your GUI session), you could run:

sudo service mdm restart

That will restart the Mint Display Manager, the default display manager under Mint.

Related Solutions

Linux Freeze – What to Do When a Linux Desktop Freezes

You can try Ctrl+Alt+* to kill the front process (Screen locking programs on Xorg 1.11) or Ctrl+Alt+F1 to open a terminal, launch a command like ps, top, or htop to see running processes and launch kill on not responding process.

Note: if not installed, install htop with sudo apt-get install htop.

Also, once done in your Ctrl+Alt+F1 virtual console, return to the desktop with Ctrl+Alt+F7.

The meaning and command executed on Ctrl+Alt+Del in Linux

Ctrl+Alt+Delete is actually a "magic" keystroke for the IBM PC-compatible hardware architecture that would call a BIOS reset.

Since this kind of thing is dangerous for a system like Linux the decision was made to hook those keystrokes and do something else instead. This is controlled by init and you can see what it does by looking in /etc/inittab.

On my Debian Squeeze system:

ca:12345:ctrlaltdel:/sbin/shutdown -t1 -a -r now

Windows NT later followed suit and turned Ctrl+Alt+Delete into the secure key entry mode*.

In the case of X, it is similarly hooking the keystrokes but it simply kills the display server (which will automatically respawn if you're using a display manager).

Some systems (perhaps all, I haven't tried in a while) you can still press Ctrl+Alt+Delete before the OS loads to trigger a BIOS reset.

*I'm not sure what they actually call it.