on Wed, Jan 02, 2002 at 12:38:34PM +0000, Simon R Tod (S.R.Tod@damtp.cam.ac.uk) wrote: Don't cross-post. Reply sent to debian-user only. > My laptop's been left on for the past 48 hours. Six days here. Uptimes of up to 22 days. > When I came back to it this morning it was very hot, the fan was > kicking in evert minute or two and everything was working really > slowly.... Not unusual if it's working hard or swapping heavily. > It's now just ceased up completely. The text has disappeared off my > xterm and I can't get any movement out of the mouse. Ditto. > I don't see how I can do anything but just turn the power off, leave > it for a few hours to cool down then reboot. Try switching to a console. Sometimes your X session is less responsive. If you've got a network, try ssh'ing into the box. If you've got a serial connection (handheld can serve as a terminal), that's another option. <ctrl><alt><backspace> should kill X (and will likely solve your memory problems). A hard boot isn't _desireable_, but it's not fatal. Cooling likely need only be for 10 minutes or so, unless your system has R-48 insulation. > Ouch I don't like that idea. The problem is, I was in the process of > upgrading my kernel - all I've got left to do is alter my > /etc/lilo.conf file, run lilo, and shutdown. A kernel build can do interesting things, including make your CPU run hard. You didn't say how long the build had been running, mine tend to be 10 - 40 minutes for PIII-600 - PPro 180 systems. > Because I hadn't altered the config file will it just reboot anyway, > using the old kernel? Yes, particularly if you hadn't installed the new kernel yet. > What worries me is that in the process of installing the kernel, > apt-get set up / applied (whatever the right terminology is!) a boot > block. Is this going to prevent the thing from rebooting? And if so, > so I don't reach the boot message that allows me to pick the Debian or > Windows OS', is there anything I can do? Boot. Hit a key (tab, space, whatever) when you get to the LILO prompt. You should get a list of kernels to boot. Debian gives vmlinuz.old as the default old kernel, you should be able to boot it. For a rescue disk, I'd strongly recommend LNX-BBC: http://www.lnxbbc.org/. Tom's Root/Boot is good, but the 2.0.x kernel series misses features needed on many current systems (ext2fs has changed, ext3fs or reiserfs are unsupported). Peace. -- Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://kmself.home.netcom.com/ What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? Home of the brave http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ Land of the free We freed Dmitry! Boycott Adobe! Repeal the DMCA! http://www.freesklyarov.org Geek for Hire http://kmself.home.netcom.com/resume.html
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