[arch-general] X keeps crashing

[Joshua Branson]

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

And I put " kernel.sysrq = 1"


 into   /etc/sysctl.d/99-sysctl.conf

   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'



Thanks,

Joshua