2-Cent Tips
[2 cent tips] Better reboot using magic SysRq
Mulyadi Santosa [mulyadi.santosa at gmail.com]
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 07:26:47 +0700
What is a better way to reboot your system in case it hangs? I mean
rather than three finger salute or kicking the power switch? 
Let's assume you have enable the magic SysRq before. Make sure this feature is compiled in the kernel (CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ) and you enable it (echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq). Then when the disaster strike, you can try pressing these key combos in the following order: 1. Alt-SyRq-s (sync the buffer with the disk) 2. Alt-SysRq-u (remount all filesystem as read-only) 3. Alt-SysRq-e (kill all tasks, except init) 4. Alt-SysRq-b (finally, reboot system)
If your keyboard doesn't have SysRq, use PrintScreen instead. The way I do it is like this: press alt, hold, press sysrq, hold, then press s (or other key), then release them all. You might also try, press alt, hold, press sysrq, release it, press s or other key, release all.
In most cases, the above sequence could reboot your system better. But
if not, just fall back to the "traditional" one
Reference: sysrq.txt in Documentation directory inside kernel source code's tree.
-- regards,Freelance Linux trainer and consultant
blog: the-hydra.blogspot.com training: mulyaditraining.blogspot.com
[ Thread continues here (5 messages/3.52kB) ]
2-cent Tip: Screen Shots
Ben Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:56:07 -0400
----- Forwarded message from Henry Grebler <henrygrebler at optusnet.com.au> -----
I was writing an article. I needed more than words; I needed screen shots. Over the years, I've done this in different ways. Of late, I've used ImageMagick(1) for this sort of work, in particular,
import - saves any visible window on an X server and outputs it as an image file. You can capture a single window, the entire screen, or any rectangular portion of the screen.
I was capturing parts of web pages. Then I came to a roadblock. I clicked on a button and it produced a drop-down list. I wanted to capture the contents of the drop-down list. But, some drop-down lists are unfriendly. For example, in Firefox, if I click on File, the usual drop-down list appears, but now my keyboard is deactivated. I also lose most mouse functions, except for moving the cursor. And, if I click anywhere, the drop-down list disappears.
So how to take the screen shot?
I started up a vncserver and a vncviewer (client); and then invoked Firefox inside the VNC client.
Click on File, move the cursor out of the VNC client, and, voila - I can now use import to take a screen shot of the menu of the Firefox running in vncviewer.
----- End forwarded message -----
[ Thread continues here (3 messages/5.74kB) ]
