Console peaced out?

[tom pollerman]

On Friday 17 December 2004 15:26, Jim Maul wrote:
> I am running rh9 on a couple machines at work here.  While i was out
> sick one day a co-worker logged into one of the machines and did loaded
> up xwindows (startx).  I (and him) have done this many times in the past
> without a problem but for some reason when he did it this time, he said
> that xwindows started loading but then the screen went black and that
> was it.  I originally thought it might be something with the display
> settings being out of range for the monitor but it appears that is not
> the problem.  The machine responds fine (to ping and such) and i can get
> into it through ssh without and problems but the console appears to be
> hosed.  The keyboard is unresponsive (i cant even get the numlock light
> to come on) and the screen is just sitting there black.  It is not a
> problem with the monitor or anything as i have swapped that out.
>
> I tried killing his session to see if it would log him out and return
> the console to a prompt but that did not happen.  The session ended as
> it not longer is displayed in top or who but still the console remains
> black and the keyboard is unresponsive.
>
> Is there something that i can kill or run to be able to get the console
> back?  This machine usually goes 8-10 months before something comes up
> where it needs to be rebooted and i REALLY dont want to have to reboot
> it now.  Its serving quite a lot for us here.  And yes, i know you
> shouldnt really be running x on a console of a server but hey, he did
> and now its hosed and i gotta deal with it.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas or perhaps more info is needed?
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Jim

  Sometimes when your terminal is behaving strangely, you can try to reset it 
to a "reasonable" set of default settings by 'blindly' typing  the command:

                  stty sane <enter>

or:

               CTRL-J
               stty sane
               CTRL-J

(CTRL-J is interpreted as a carriage-return, in case <enter> is also 
unresponsive)

                            Best,

                            Tom