console frozen, can't switch vt

[g whitley mott]

hello redhatters,

i would guess i need to reboot, but i just thought i'd ask first..

i killed X with ctl-alt-bsp, the console still shows a signature pattern
of my windows dying away, ctl-alt-Fn doesn't work, i can get in via ssh
from elsewhere, X is gone, getty is still running on the VT's, chvt
doesn't help.

it's not happened to me before, i've exhausted my tricks for how to
nudge it.  are there any other tricks to try?

also fwiw, the reason i killed X is because, using gimp, X quickly gets
mired in pageswap to the tune of 280mb total.  and, page swap is
surprisingly slow on this rh9 box, while other disk activity is as
speedy as you'd expect.  meanwhile running gimp on the same box with X
on a different rh7.2 box, X there (4.1.0-50) doesnt grab anywhere near
as much memory, so i'm guessing the newer xfree86 (4.3.0-2.90.55) is a
pig..

tia,
-g