There you are, staring at a crashed Gnome session, CTRL-ALT-BKSPC does nothing. ALT-CTRL-F1 won’t bring you to a terminal where you could cd to /etc/init.d and restart gdm. In short, your choices seem to be limited to holding down the power button and chancing file system corruption or nothing.
But wait! There’s two more options that you may not have known about!
Here are two ways to first try and kill just the process on your current terminal (thus allowing you to get back into your machine and at least attempt a ’shutdown -h now’ command) and if that fails, to bring your machine down in a more graceful manner than a hard shutdown.
First, we’ll try and kill all the process on your current terminal. To do this, hold down the following keys -
ALT + SysReq + k
What the heck is a SysReq key? Look for it on your PrtSc or Print Screen key. The k in this instance stands for Kill.
If that doesn’t work for you, it’s time to take drastic action. You’ll now enter a series of keystrokes that will tell your computer to do some housekeeping before shutting down.
ALT + SysReq + r
This stands for Raw keyboard mode.
ALT + SysReq + s
This syncs the disk.
ALT + SysReq + e
This terminates all processes
ALT + SysReq + i
Kill’s all processes that weren’t terminated nicely.
ALT + SysReq + u
Remounts all filesystems as read only.
ALT + SysReq + b
Reboots.
That’s a heck of a lot better than simply holding down the power button and hoping everything works out okay.
How will you ever remember all those keystrokes? There is a long held mnemonic that makes it a bit easier:
Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring - RSEIUB
You should use this method only if other methods (mentioned above) fail.
Technorati Tags: reboot, ubuntu, graceful, rseiub, technology, computers, linux
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December 12th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Wow, this is useful, but is there a shorter sequence, this one is really hard to remember.
December 12th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
David,
Unfortunately there’s not a sequence that’s shorter that will also allow your computer to shut down in a manner that won’t harm filesystems or files.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
SSSSUB will sync your discs
Always sync at least 3 times, with 10 seconds in between. Your machine might be very busy, and will need time to write all that data to disc. In that time new data might have gathered. If you want to be sure do e or i first, to killall all tasks.
After all the data has been written out, you just unmount the disks, and reboot the system.
Not nice, but not all that bad either. For desktop machines it really doesn’t matter all that much.
December 12th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Will this work under the Gnome desktop for other distributions like Suse?
December 12th, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Honestly, I haven’t tried it under Suse, but I have a feeling that it will work. As I understand it, this is a fairly standard *nixism.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
It also depends on the kernel config option CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ.
See http://beranger.org/index.php?article=2125
December 13th, 2006 at 7:16 am
I thought crashing was reserved for windows systems.
You forgot to include the old Ctrl+Alt+Del method.
December 13th, 2006 at 8:28 am
Hey Binny, the hallmark of any good sysadmin is the ability to crash just about anything in the world, including Linux machines, expensive automobiles and the stock market.
December 13th, 2006 at 9:57 am
You can also attempt to ssh in from another PC and shutdown. This is handy when the terminal appears to be locked up.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Hey this is a good tip. My laptop has issues sometimes and I have to hard power-off. I’ll try this next time. Remember “raising skinny elephants is utterly boring”
December 13th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
These magic keystrokes are basically talking to the Kernel directly, some variation of them should work on all *nix
December 17th, 2006 at 4:58 am
Thanks for writing this it was very informative. I sorta wish I would have known about it 2 years ago
February 1st, 2007 at 3:27 pm
On most modern desktop systems, clicking the power button (instead of holding it for ~4.8 seconds) sends an interrupt to the operating system, to which most operating systems will respond by starting the ‘gracefully shutdown’-routine. In case you’re using Linux, it’ll often be almost equal to saying ‘reboot’ or ‘init 6′.
It has always worked for me, provided that it was a ATX-like system. Or something.
March 1st, 2008 at 3:12 am
Hello
Re>There is a long held mnemonic that makes it a bit easier:
> Raising Skinny Elephants Is Utterly Boring - RSEIUB
>You should use this method only if other methods (mentioned above) fail.
Thanks for the useful help! I understand how mnemonics work, but afraid I am still at a loss to see how this one relates to the above instructions.
Can you clarify?
Regards
John
September 3rd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
That worked great for me. thanx!
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:51 am
A much easier way to remember the same thing:
REISUB - BUSIER backwards.
December 4th, 2008 at 3:10 am
Is there a way to do this without the SysRq key? I run Ubuntu on a MacBook Late ‘07, and there’s no SysRq/PrtScr key.
December 7th, 2008 at 7:05 am
Nice tips, thanks
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 pm
is there a beginner article?
March 11th, 2009 at 7:49 am
A better mnemonic is Restart System Even If Utterly Broken.
July 3rd, 2009 at 12:23 pm
I learned the where you terminate all processes before syncing the disks. This makes remembering it much easier as it is simply “BUSIER” backwards.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Also, to remember RSEIUB I use:
“Reboot System Even If Utterly Broken”
I find it easy to remember… and makes more sense xD
January 25th, 2010 at 12:49 am
What is the possible damage that can be done if you just hit the power button?
February 19th, 2010 at 7:50 am
Tried it today, it worked. Thanks.
March 16th, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Hey this is a good tip. My laptop has issues sometimes and I have to hard power-off. I’ll try this next time. Remember “raising skinny elephants is utterly boring”..
May 19th, 2010 at 3:40 am
Honestly, I haven’t tried it under Suse, but I have a feeling that it will work. As I understand it, this is a fairly standard *nixism.
June 29th, 2010 at 6:49 pm
The problem with the reboot, the computer simply does not restart.
Downloads I386 for x86 systems
I tried to put KUbuntu / Ubuntu, Debian.
In windose everything is normal.
Shutting down is fine. Restating system crashes and saves the hard reset. But this is why some settings in the graph. interface are not saved.
July 9th, 2010 at 8:41 am
Thx
ALT + SysReq + r - note)
July 15th, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Thanks for sharing this great tips. It really helps me how to reboot if something bad happens.