What is the alternative for Ctrl+Alt+Delete in Linux Ubuntu ?

[abh!shek]

Well, you don't have to end tasks that often in Linux, but I had to once. I tried Ctrl+Alt+Delete but it didn't work. Is there a different shortcut key combination for that ?

[manav]

# do this
$ top
# read the process id of the process to kill
$ kill -KILL id

# do man kill
# i don't remember the kill command properly :D

[CornedBee]

kill <pid>

or if that doesn't help

kill -KILL <pid>

[abh!shek]

what ? kill what ?

[matsp]

Right, us "ps" or "top" to find the process ID (pid) of the task you want to end, then use "kill 1234", where "1234" is the pid of the task you want to end.

If that doesn't work [because the task is "stubborn"] you can try "kill -KILL 1234" (or the shorter form that does exactly the same thing "kill -9 1234").

--
Mats

[abh!shek]

Originally Posted by matsp

Right, us "ps" or "top" to find the process ID (pid) of the task you want to end, then use "kill 1234", where "1234" is the pid of the task you want to end.

If that doesn't work [because the task is "stubborn"] you can try "kill -KILL 1234" (or the shorter form that does exactly the same thing "kill -9 1234").

--
Mats

Great! Now how do I get the pid ? and where to write the "kill pid" thing ? The command prompt won't open. The system was not responding at all!

[matsp]

You get the pid from "ps" or "top", but it sounds like you have a bigger problem than that. If the system isn't responding, try "ctrl-alt-1" and see if you get a login prompt in text mode. If that doesn't work, then "big red switch" (power off) is the only answer, and you may have to hold the power-button in for a few seconds to make a forced power-down, if the OS is really dead.

--
Mats

[CornedBee]

Suppose Firefox doesn't react. I do
ps -A
and get

...
 5821 ?        00:00:00 ruby
 6600 ?        00:00:00 gconfd-2
 6610 ?        00:00:00 mozilla-launche
 6619 ?        00:02:51 firefox-bin
 7330 ?        00:00:39 java
 7368 ?        00:00:01 konsole
...

This tells me that firefox-bin, the actual Firefox executable, has PID 6619. I can now send it a SIGTERM, asking it politely to quit right now, kthxbai.
kill 6619

If Firefox doesn't react because, for example, it hangs in deadlock and even signal handlers don't get through, I can send a SIGKILL, telling the OS to just kill the stupid thing.
kill -KILL 6619

[manav]

Originally Posted by matsp

. . . then "big red switch" (power off) is the only answer, and you may have to hold the power-button in for a few seconds to make a forced power-down, if the OS is really dead.

And people say that Microsoft makes bad Windows

[CornedBee]

*shrug*
It's only bad device drivers that can lock up the computer so completely. And that goes for Windows, too.

Coincidently, the only driver I've had lock up the computer was the closed-source ATI driver.

[matsp]

I have been using both Linux and Windows for several years. Despite what anyone says, there isn't any huge difference in stability - Windows XP and 2K, I've had uptimes of 150+ days [and the cause of reboot is usually either a software update or some kind of power failure or such]. Linux I've had more problems with hardware failure than with the OS crashing - it's really stable as long as you avoid experimental drivers [of which I've worked on several - and the uptime then is usually measured in single digit hours or even minutes].

I was at Windows Driver Developers Conference a few years ago. Microsoft has a pretty large database of all the faults reported against it's products [you know the box that says "Something failed, do you want to report this to Microsoft?"]. When the data has been classified, the biggest group of "faults" is in drivers, not surprisingly - there are many, many more lines of driver code than there are any other form of kernel code, bot in Linux and Windows.

Further, unsurprisingly, the biggest of that group, by a good margin, was graphics drivers.

--
Mats

[manav]

yeah, i also feel that hardware vendors need to be more standardized, more disciplined and need to appoint better driver writer OR better yet just make their hardware open source.

[abh!shek]

Originally Posted by CornedBee

*shrug*
It's only bad device drivers that can lock up the computer so completely. And that goes for Windows, too.

Coincidently, the only driver I've had lock up the computer was the closed-source ATI driver.

Bingo! I have ATI radeon graphics card. And that driver had already messed up the GUI of my Kubuntu partition.