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Home What to do when a Linux desktop freezes? Ask Question

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I'm a Windows guy, dual booted recently, and now I'm using Linux Mint 12
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If all else fails, you Raise The Elephant.  Essentially, there are special Magic SysRq key
Optiver
What is Teams? sequences ( Alt + SysRq + ? ) that the Linux kernel handles specially. Amsterdam, Netherlands
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If your Linux box freezes and simply won't yield to any other key-commands, you should
definitely try one particular key sequence before a hard reboot.
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The key sequence is popularly remembered with the mnemonic:

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Share Improve this answer edited Feb 21 '16 at 7:59 answered Mar 10 '12 at 5:52
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3 How do I identify why my login hangs for 20

12 This does, of course, require that Magic SysRq support is compiled in. – Alexios Mar 14 '12 at 13:58 seconds at startup?

5 Problem: some modern keyboards do not have a SysRq key... (the one I'm typing from right now 3 How to regain control of my computer?
doesn't, for instance - although it does have "print screen", "scroll lock" and "pause/break") – Dalker
Feb 26 '14 at 10:28 0 How to recover a failed KDE4 desktop
without deleting the entire ~/.kde4
19 @Dalker I just had success with using the Print Screen key instead of SysRq – user60561 directory?
Sep 23 '14 at 3:05

9 How much time should be allowed for between running each of these commands? – Highly Irregular
Related
Nov 18 '14 at 21:19
3 What happened to my desktop?
37 Reboot Even If System Utterly Broken – angrydust Feb 28 '16 at 21:49
3 Linux mint freezes on second account login
Show 6 more comments - unable to handle kernel NULL pointer
dereference at (null)

1 UI freezes when I open many tabs in

You can try Ctrl + Alt + * to kill the front process (Screen locking programs on Xorg 1.11) browser
or Ctrl + Alt + F1 to open a terminal, launch a command like ps , top , or htop to see
What to do when the desktop freezes?
125 running processes and launch kill on not responding process. 7

1 Linux Mint OS always freezes when laptop

Note: if not installed, install htop with sudo apt-get install htop . is not charging

Also, once done in your Ctrl + Alt + F1 virtual console, return to the desktop with Ctrl + 2 Linux desktop freezes after sleep
Alt + F7 .
1 Linux desktop freezes regularly with audio
skipping
Share Improve this answer edited Nov 7 '16 at 20:58 answered Feb 16 '12 at 9:54
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Why don't more people move to safe seats to run
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7 For a windows guy and a beginner in Linux, I would recommend installing htop instead of top as
Why do atomic charges balance?
it is easier to operate. – Palec Sep 2 '14 at 14:01
What has God not "desired" in Hebrews 10:8?
2 Wasn't the kill foreground process under pointer key combination Ctrl + Alt + Esc, or did that
change? (And why do my key buttons not show correct formatting?) – Franki Nov 27 '14 at 5:44 How to write a range of /16 IPs in a single
expression?
3 Which asterisk should in use for Ctrl+Alt+*? The one on the numeric keypad or in the alpha block? In
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the latter case, what would I press on non-US keyboards? – user149408 Jan 29 '15 at 10:11 against the Shatter spell?

1 Only the asterisk on numeric keypad should work, @user149408. The linked thread in oss-sec mailing Will there be collision between universes?
list suggest that. – Palec Jan 30 '17 at 16:04
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problematic for the Tu-154?
1 My console opens with Ctrl+Alt+F3 not F1 . I'm using fedora workstation 28 – Accountant ‫ م‬Jul 5 '18 at
20:41 Can the spell Find Traps find traps in legal
documents?
Show 5 more comments Could I use colors to distinguish variables in a
paper?

In Scrabble, does a blank tile on the double/triple

In most distros pressing Ctrl + Alt + Backspace kills the X11 (graphic) interface and restarts
word square count?
it. Unfortunately some recent, supposedly "user friendly" distros deactivated this very useful
Can you challenge constutionality "en passant" as
41 shortcut for some unfathomable reason. I don't know if Mint is so "user friendly" but you have part of a different legal procedure?
nothing to lose trying it :) Rock arches on the moon?

Can I charge my new iPhone with iMac

Share Improve this answer Follow answered Mar 9 '12 at 21:52
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of recommendation for my common app if I
1,181 10 14
committed academic dishonesty in his course?

Why are planes required to cruise at round flight

6 Make sure this is enabled in Mint by searching for 'Startup Applications' in the menu, and then making levels only above 18000 ft of altitude?
sure 'Ctrl Alt Backspace' is checked. – Jeshurun Apr 12 '13 at 10:58
What are martial classes?
1 AFAIRK,the newer fancy xorg evdev input drivers disable the 'zapping' by default. However, there is a
What is the rationale for distinguishing between
way to reenable them on startup in /etc/xorg.conf or /etc/xorg.conf.d/XX-somefile or set it in a per-user proper and improper fractions?
xorg startup script (maybe put setxkbmap -option "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" into
Increment The Time
~/.xinitrc) by adding the line Option "XKbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" into a
corresponding Section "InputClass" , or by setting another switch in your OS that relays to do Apache .htaccess rewrite rules to NGINX
that. – Franki Nov 27 '14 at 5:57 converted rules not effective

Who robbed the store?

1 It is still on by default in OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. – Geoffrey Dec 3 '16 at 10:52
What is the difference between a causal system
1 In Fedora [install,] open gnome-tweaks and check 'key sequence to kill Xserver' in the and a memoryful system?
mouse/keyboard section – Dmitry Koroliov Jul 15 '19 at 14:35
What would be the most effective role to place
1 Run dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration to enable it (in the last step) in Ubuntu. 150-300 modern soldiers in during the Civil War?

– Zheng Qu Jul 22 at 8:48 Chicken out followed by an infinitive

Light switch on concrete wall

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Besides what was already mentioned, I also use those tricks:

13 If by any chance the unresponsive program was started in a terminal, I would try a Ctrl
+ D or Ctrl + C . If nothing happens I'd try a Ctrl + Z followed by a ruthless kill .

If I knew the responsible program, I would open a terminal and use killall . (E.g.,
killall firefox )

Alternatively, under Gnome, I would launch run command and invoke xkill , which
allows you to kill a program by simply clicking on a window it owns.

Finally, just in case my keyboard melts, I have a System Monitor applet (also under
Gnome) which will pop up the gnome-system-monitor when clicked. From there, I can
kill any process I own using only my mouse.

Share Improve this answer edited Sep 2 '14 at 19:18 answered Jun 19 '12 at 15:24
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Adding one more possible solution to the mix, and (apart from the accepted answer) one of
the least destructive of the answers so far.
10
If you cannot:

Use keyboard/mouse to A) Run the Ctrl + Alt + * option above, B) Navigate to a utility
that can be used to terminate the offending program, C) Launch a terminal to initiate a
pkill <process name> (or similar, as detailed above)

-OR-

Switch to another virtual console ( Ctrl + Alt +any one of F1-6 ), to initiate a pkill
<process name> (or similar, as detailed above)

... then assuming MagicSysRq support is compiled into the kernel (From
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_keys), on a QWERTY keyboard (alternatives for the below
f are provided in the aforementioned article), one can try:

+ SysRq (Note caveats on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_keys#Commands)+ f to

Alt
"Call oom_kill, which kills a process to alleviate an O ut  O f  M emory condition", which (at
least for me) often kills the program that is causing the issue, as it is the largest RAM
consuming process running at the time.

Share Improve this answer edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37 answered Dec 30 '13 at 5:24
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On laptops you might need to press Ctrl Fn F1 to open terminal, what I do is type
reboot now to restart from terminal.
7
To go back to the GUI from terminal on my laptop (HP G56) I have to Ctrl Fn F8

(apparently it could also be Ctrl Fn F7 ) and you should be back to graphical interface.

Also check http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/244

Stopping & Starting

shutdown -h now – Shutdown the system now and do not reboot

halt – Stop all processes - same as above

shutdown -r 5 – Shutdown the system in 5 minutes and reboot

shutdown -r now – Shutdown the system now and reboot

reboot – Stop all processes and then reboot - same as above

startx – Start the X system

Share Improve this answer edited Sep 2 '12 at 23:31 answered Sep 2 '12 at 11:03
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Another suggestion if you are using Gnome3 (I think the default Mint installation uses
something similar), you can use CTRL + F2 then press R and hit return. I use this often
6 and it works. It basically restarts the GUI. Even if you don't see anything on the screen (e.g.,
it is frozen) you should do that and it will restart the GUI.

Share Improve this answer edited Jun 19 '12 at 17:57 answered Feb 16 '12 at 18:31
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ctrl f2 does not work anymore :( dunno why –  Lynob Feb 16 '12 at 20:10

maybe isn't works in the Mint GUI, since the default Mint GUI isn't exactly Gnome, but on Gnome 3 it
works for sure. – Hanan N. Feb 16 '12 at 20:51

3 Instead of Ctrl+F2, press Alt+F2. Then it works fine. – user16437 Mar 9 '12 at 16:43

1 This changed in GNOME3. Pressing Alt+F2 will open a run box where you can type the command r .
This is restarting gnome-shell, which in GNOME 3.x has had many memory leaks which lead to it
becoming slower and slower over time. Performing this restart released much of this RAM. – slm ♦
Mar 8 '14 at 6:39

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On my laptop when it completely freezes (unresponsive mouse or keyboard) on mint 17.3,

I'm able to do control + alt + fn + f7, then control + alt + fn+ f2. This gets to the shell, then I
3 login with my username and password. To go back to the desktop I do chvt 8 this gets me
back to my current desktop. To find out the active tty's type w then chvt to the current one.

That way you can resume your work without rebooting or losing anything.

Share Improve this answer edited Mar 26 '17 at 8:30 answered Mar 26 '17 at 8:08
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Not yet mentioned but might work in some cases - try CTRL + ALT + RIGHTARROW or
LEFTARROW . This did switch workspaces, and doing so somehow unhitched whatever was
2 blocking mouse and keyboard actions. I could then switch back to the first workspace, kill
Chromium, which I had by then figured had crashed and was hogging all keyboard and
mouse events. Now everything's back to normal, no reboot or loss of anything involved.

In my case, just minutes ago, everything was hung except the mouse moved the cursor, but
the mouse did no more. The PrtScn made a popup saying I could drag a rectangle (but not)
or hit ESC (works). Nothing else worked. Not even moving the cursor onto another window,
when I have focus-follows-mouse, changes the window frame highlighting. But Ctrl + Alt +
F3 did switch to a text term, Ctrl + Alt + F1 brought back the X windows session.

The culprit was Chromium. I was reading, switched tabs in one browser window, and upon
clicking the tab everything froze but for the few things just described. Switching workspaces

Share Improve this answer edited Aug 19 '20 at 21:29 answered Aug 19 '20 at 21:22
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