> I have to check for zombies but X works fine - it is the TEXT MODE > consoles that seem to somehow have gotten into graphics mode. > Killing processes is no problem at all since sshd works fine as > well. Thanks for the thought anyway. does the fbcon driver work on alpha, yet? you might try that - i had some crazy problems like this on a laptop; installing fbcon and running X on top of that helped TREMENDOUSLY. elijah