How better handle crashes: no cursor, no mouse; keyboard shortcuts?

[pwrcul]

I am looking for a better way to handle crashes, something that is probably well known by those in practice, at least I hope.

Last night I installed Kubuntu 11.04 amd64.
I have had two crashes that I eventually terminated with the big button on my box.
Both took away control over cursor and mouse.

<Ctrl><Alt><Del>, F2, F4 did nothing and I can't recall what I should have used instead if anything to get me out of Kwin and Plasma so I could do a shutdown -hP or reboot Kwin somehow.

I did a fresh install, replacing 32bit 9.10 Kubuntu.
The first crash was while shutting down. I got a message about Jokey crashing and started to fill out the forms offered when cursor and mouse stopped.
The second crash was while I was using vi to edit my /etc/default/grub (after backing it up). Same thing: no mouse or cursor.

The deeper issue will be what caused the crashes, but for now I mainly want

[oshunluvr]

Re: How better handle crashes: no cursor, no mouse; keyboard shortcuts?

My understanding is the order should be:

Raising
Skinny
Elephants
Is
Utterly
Boring

[pwrcul]

Re: How better handle crashes: no cursor, no mouse; keyboard shortcuts?

The best known keyboard action to restart a stuck computer is called 'Magical Keys'.
ALT+SYSRQ+(one after the other) r e i s u b

Thanks to both Teunis and oshunluvr for their advice.
I think on my keyboard I would press ALT+Shift+PrintScreen and r e i s u b (following the Wikipedia article below that had "Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring")

I have not had another "opportunity" or freeze to respond to but I am now more prepared
Meanwhile I enabled CTRL+ALT+BS and found these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_keys
http://superuser.com/questions/17135...ux-gui-freezes

[wizard10000]

Re: How better handle crashes: no cursor, no mouse; keyboard shortcuts?

My understanding is the order should be:

Raising
Skinny
Elephants
Is
Utterly
Boring

I've heard that too but syncing filesystems before sending SIGTERM sounds a little odd to me - I don't know this for sure but it seems some applications may write more data to the disk before terminating. Maybe it doesn't make any difference?

R: Switch the keyboard from raw mode to XLATE mode
S: Sync all mounted filesystems
E: Send the SIGTERM signal to all processes except init
I: Send the SIGKILL signal to all processes except init
U: Remount all mounted filesystems in read-only mode
B: Immediately reboot the system, without unmounting partitions or syncing

I use this one because it makes more sense to me and is easier to remember (think 'busier' backwards) -

R: Switch the keyboard from raw mode to XLATE mode
E: Send the SIGTERM signal to all processes except init
I: Send the SIGKILL signal to all processes except init
S: Sync all mounted filesystems
U: Remount all mounted filesystems in read-only mode
B: Immediately reboot the system, without unmounting partitions or syncing

[dibl]

Re: How better handle crashes: no cursor, no mouse; keyboard shortcuts?

wiki shows it both ways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

Apparently it makes no difference.

[GreyGeek]

Re: How better handle crashes: no cursor, no mouse; keyboard shortcuts?

I frequently test apps and because of that I have Ctrl+Alt+BS activated to kill the xserver and throw me back to the login screen.

In System Settings --> Power Management --> Actions, I have closing the lid or pressing the power button running the Shutdown command.

[wizard10000]

Re: How better handle crashes: no cursor, no mouse; keyboard shortcuts?

wiki shows it both ways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key

Apparently it makes no difference.

I think the difference may be mostly academic but it seems a little strange to me that you'd flush disk buffers before asking an application to terminate.

But you're right. Real-world it probably makes no difference at all.