My Arch linux box keeps crashing on me. I'm using the awesome wm, and at least once every other day I have to forcibly shut down my machine. This usually happens when I am using emacs, chromium, and filezilla. What happens is my screen locks up. I can't move my mouse. None of the awesome shortcuts work. I'm unable to switch to another virtual console. What can I do in situations like this? Does Arch support a Ctl-Alt-Delete?

I've had lots of problems with drivers. Maybe it was an update? Try to downgrade some recent drivers or the X if you only started having this problem recently. If the X is stuck, you can try Alt-SysRq-r before switching to virtual console (it makes keyboard input raw, instead of going through Xorg).

I found this article: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Keyboard_shortcuts

And I put " kernel.sysrq = 1"

into /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf Note the following commands I've tried:

# sysctl kernel.sysrq = 1 ; echo $? kernel.sysrq = 1 sysctl: malformed setting "=" sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/1: No such file or directory 253 # sysctl 'kernel.sysrq = 1' ; echo $? sysctl: cannot stat /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq : No such file or directory 255 # sudo sysctl kernel.sysrq=1 ; echo $? kernel.sysrq = 1 0 I didn't know, but it seems there can't be any spaces. As it's the same program processing /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf, there can't be any spaces there either. It's like variables in bash I suppose: spacing makes all the difference.

I've rebooted, and I still can't get it to work. I'm using an apple macbook 7,1, which is a fairly old laptop (it has 4 gigs of ram), and I can't get any of the *R*eboot *E*ven *I*f *S*ystem *U*tterly *B*roken to work. I've read the article on wikipedia about the Magic SysRq key, but I can't get any of it to work. I'm using the dvorak keyboard layout as well, but I'm not sure if that changes anything. Also I've swapped alt and control with this in my .~/xinitrc

setxkbmap dvorak setxkbmap -option 'ctrl:swapcaps'

I'd try to use a rescue USB (with Xorg - from another distribution) and see what drivers are loaded (lsmod output), and what X configuration is being used.

Thanks,

Joshua

Hope this helps, João Miguel

On Tue, 09 Feb 2016 18:55:09 +0100 SET wrote:

I started to have exactly the same problem on my new HP laptop, complete UI and peripheral freeze. By just pulling out the power cord, the system instantly becomes responsive again and I can continue work normally. It won't appear again until next reboot, always randomly. I always find a vgaarb error in everything.log at the very moment of the lockup :

Feb 9 08:03:47 hp2 kernel: [70005.222588] vgaarb: this pci device is not a vga device

The above line is also logged without any system freeze.

I think the above line is logged on systems that have both intel and nvidia gpus. The system runs on the intel, so the nvidia can only be used with optirun. Unlikely to be the problem. If you are using KDE, it seems a little iffy on some intel hardware right now, maybe try software rendering instead of opengl? -- Joakim