Re: dudes, my laptop won't even give me a terminal prompt - xorg problem....

[A J Stiles <deb64@earthshod.co.uk>]

On Monday 20 Apr 2009, Michael Fothergill wrote:
> Is there a key I can depress after booting that will make the machine
> ignore the failed cycle of onanism I appear to have engendered here and
> give me a terminal prompt and I can then work on fixing this?  Xorg and
> Gnome have worked well in the past and I have got them working both with
> the NVIDIA card and without.  I think this is just a temporary problem.

Alt + SysRq + S - emergency sync
Alt + SysRq + U - unmount file systems and remount read-only
Alt + SysRq + B - reboot

Then select "single user mode" in the bootloader.  (with LILO, hold down LH 
shift; highlight a kernel and type a space and "single"; with GRUB, highlight 
a single-user mode.)

Hope that helps.

-- 
AJS
delta echo bravo six four at earthshod dot co dot uk