SUMMARY: Killing window manager

From: Mark Belanger (mark_belanger@ltx.com)
Date: Tue May 26 1998 - 08:42:31 CDT


Original Question:
> I have a stand-alone Sparc Ultra running
> CDE and Solaris 2.5.1 (recent recommended patches)
>
> This is a demo machine that is running some fairly
> buggy software which causes the desktop to completely
> freeze. When the desktop hangs, the cursor still moves
> but can't affect any windows, icons, or anything else.
> Short of hitting Stop-A, is there any way to kill the
> window manager and/or X ? I've RTFM'd everything I could
> find with no luck.
>
> I've seen some desktops with key-sequences to kill
> the desktop and was hoping CDE/solaris had something
> similar. Note, this machine is not networked, thus
> remote logins are not an option.

Answers:
The short answer is - there is no way to kill the
errant process/window manager without getting
remote access to the machine.
Since this is a non-networked machine, rlogin/telnet
is not an option. A couple of people suggested gaining
access via a terminal connected to the serial port.
I haven't tried that, but it would undoubtedly work.
This machine will go on the road for demo purposes thus
the overhead of an extra terminal is probably not worth
the benefits.

For completeness, all replies are enclosed.

Thanks to
Harvey Wamboldt <harvey@iotek.ns.ca>
derek.terveer@ci.saint-paul.mn.us
Arthur Darren Dunham <add@netcom.com>

Harvey Wamboldt wrote:
>
> There is probably an easier way, but when I lose control I rlogin or
> telnet in from another machine, then: "ps -ef | egrep <user> | less"
> and "kill <pid>" to take out X or the window manager, or even the
> oldest shell. That's usually sufficient to terminate the login
> session. Depending on what you kill, the only problem is that you can
> lose data in with open files. Therefore this is the option of last
> resort. Often the problem is a wayward program, so if you can kill
> that program you don't have to touch the X server or the window
> manager. A program that catches the "TERM" signal may have to be
> killed with a "kill -9 <pid>" (terminate with extreme prejudice).
> Check out olwm(1), Xsun(1), dtwm(1), and of course kill(1) for more
> info.

Derek Terveer wrote:
>
> Is it possible to hook up a little serial terminal to the computer,
> and configure it for logins on the serial port? Then, when it hangs
> you can login via the terminal and use the command line to do whaterver
> you want.

Arthur Darren Dunham wrote:
>
> Netscape does the same thing...
>
> > I've seen some desktops with key-sequences to kill
> > the desktop and was hoping CDE/solaris had something
> > similar. Note, this machine is not networked, thus
> > remote logins are not an option.
>
> Not that I've found. The old Openwindows 3 server used to have a
> command line switch to enable such a key sequence, but I've found
> nothing for the current server.
>
> If you get desperate, you could hook up a terminal to a serial port..
>

Marco Greene wrote:
>
> Telnet to the frozen machine and ps -ef | grep ........ then kill the
> process. This usually works depending on how "frozen" the machine is. If
> it is just the windows environment, then you are set, if it is the entire
> machine well then nothing can be done except STOP-A.
>

-- 
Mark Belanger (mjb@ltx.com)	|  LTX Corporation         
LTX Park at University Ave  	|  Voice : (617) 467-5021
Westwood, MA 02090-2306, USA    |  Fax :  (617) 329-6880



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