Author: David Bell Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] Has sysrq stopped working between sarge and etch?
Andy Smith wrote: > I've got 3 servers, two of which are on etch and one is still on
> sarge. All three have their serial ports connected to a Cisco
> terminal server. Recently I've been trying to use the magic sysrq
> commands[1] over serial and I find that I can't trigger them on the
> etch servers.
First of all thank-you for teaching me about something I didn't know
about Linux! The function appears to be live and working in production
copies of Ubuntu 7.04 (and probably earlier). This is arguably stupid
since I'm not a kernel developer and I shouldn't be able to turn the
computer off when X is locked.
Uou can trigger the magic sysrq functions through a keyboard connected
to the computer with Alt+Sysreq/Print Screen+<function> such as "k"
which restarts X11 when you're inside X11 - well it kills the processes
and gdm restarts.
I'm not quite sure why it doesn't work over your serial connection but
perhaps, if you can, plug in a keyboard and try that. If indeed it works
at least you'll know where the problem lies.
