[prev] [thread] [next] [lurker] [Date index for 2007/01/09]
During the last weekend, X running on my Linux desktop crashed, taking about 5 ssh sessions (spawned for running about 50000 automated tests) with it. My admins refused to believe that (no messages in some log file). The fact that Alt-F7 showed a textual login prompt, and Firefox (started after running xinit and /some/path/startkde or the like) detected a corpse of it's twin, asking if I wanted it to continue the nuked sessions, and the ashes of my test script processes (in the form of log files last modified at about 4 AM) were not convincing enough. Who knows - maybe I didn't /notice/ my X. "What's your (mandatory due to a 'security policy') screen-locking screensaver?". "A black screen, obviously". "Hmmm..." Speaking of black screens, after restarting and fscking some of the fs, the machine displayed one good one. It also refused to react to peripheral devices (I tried a keyboard, a mount and a ping). And then I pushed a nice biggish gray button, which is the best peripheral device on this machine. Anyway, no more ssh sessions outside of screen. I have a dying local machine and deadlines, that's more than enough death, I don't need dead remote processes. screen works pretty good, especially when I `setenv TERM xterm` to satisfy hordes of brain-crippled statements scattered throughout my .fuckrc files which I copied from other people and never understood. It wouldn't respond to things like Shift-Page Up to view large chunks of stdout, but I never counted on shell sessions to survive for too long, so luckily I also have all those log files to grep. But I'd still be happy to find out there's a workaround. I saw a Mac laptop today. GUI without X. Inspiring. I think I'll go take a photograph.
Generated at 00:01 on 12 Jan 2007 by mariachi 0.52