How best to debug a crash?

[Jamon Camisso]

jim ruxton wrote:
>>> Occasionally my computer will completely lock up to the point where my
>>> only solution is a hard reset. ie. holding in the power button. I'm
>>> using Fedora 5. What is the best way to find out what went wrong. Also
>>> is there an alternative to the hard reset. I try killing X and that
>>> doesn't seem to work. It happens rarely so it is hard to find a pattern
>>> in what causes the freeze. Any suggestions what I should do when this
>>> happens. Hate to have to do a hard reset on a linux system : ( .
>> Someone (Seneca) taught me how to use alt+SysRQ. The magic order of keys 
>> I find works best is RESUB, easuy to rememer and pretty much covers 
>> rebooting as gracefully as possible.
>>
>> More here: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/457
> Thank you. For some reason I can't get this key combination to work for
> me. My computer wants to do a screen grab when I do this. My SysRQ key
> seems to want to do a screen grab. Perhaps I don't understand what you
> mean by RESUB?

The SysRq key is also print screen on any keyboard I've seen. Are you
holding alt while pressing SysRq? If that doesn't work, do it with
ctrl+alt+sysrq. Been a while since I needed it and don't want to
restart, so I don't recall which it is. Pressing RSEUB (as someone
suggested) while holding the sysrq and alt/ctrl keys down should do it.
Save and close everything you're working on first!

Jamon
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