[wplug] Too busy printing?

Vance Kochenderfer vkochend at nyx.net
Tue May 24 13:31:42 EDT 2005


"Weber, Larry A" <laweber at switch.com> wrote:
> Thanks, I will try this but the main problem is that the system is 100% busy
> with whatever it is doing with the harddrive.  It responds occasionally to a
> mouse move but not the keyboard or mouse keys, so I have no way to take
> control except turning it off.

It may not be the best solution, but when I had a problem with a video
driver locking up the system, I would do the following:

Before running the problem command, log into a separate console as root.
Put a CD (doesn't matter what) into the drive.
ls /mnt/cdrom and look for any regular file (let's call it 'somefile').
Run the following:
  # while /bin/true
  > do
  > sleep 30
  > test -f /mnt/cdrom/somefile || shutdown -r now
  > done

Then switch back to your main console.  If the system bogs down again,
just push the button to eject the CD and wait 30 seconds or less for
the system to reboot.

Note that this won't help much if your system locks the CD drive
(usually not a problem if it automounts CDs).  And of course, it
deprives you of the ability to swap different CDs in and out.

I'm sure you can come up with a number of variations, like using the
floppy drive instead of the CD drive, or killing off the offending
process instead of rebooting the system.

Vance Kochenderfer        |  "Get me out of these ropes and into a
vkochend at nyx.net          |   good belt of Scotch"    -Nick Danger


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