[KLUG Members] Linux Freeze-up

[awilliam at whitemice.org]

> > Try Crtl-Alt-F1 to access the console.  Probably just killing Mozilla
> > would restore control to you.
> More generally, after the Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get to a console run "top" to
> find out what process(es) are eating up all the cycles and killing
> those.  You can exit top to do the killing or do it from within top.
> Just in case you have such a lock-up in the future and aren't sure what
> program is the culprit.

I see this once in a while and it isn't that the application is burning 
all the CPU (actually pretty hard to do under a 2.6.x kerner).  Often the 
hung application is simply holding the focus (keyboard and mouse events).  
Thus giving the machine a hung feel, while the other applications are 
happilly sputtering along.  This is I think actually an X11 bug but I 
haven't researched it since it happens so rarely (and I've got lots of 
other things to research).