Problem :
I’ve recently lost my window options, had to somehow manipulate my way to Xchat and ask some people how do I get it back (it was metacity --replace, and after I decided to stop the command and run it in background the X was completely useless so I had to do killall -u user).
And that was after the internet connection stopped working for some reason (might’ve been the ISP).
The thing is, after using linux a long time, I still get the feeling
that on dire situations, I don’t know the good tricks (stuff like metacity --replace).
I feel like a really need like a “rescue” cheatsheet for things like:
- how to save the X no matter what without pressing reset
- how to reset the system to “normal state”
- how to connect to the internet through the command line
- how to monitor what the X is doing
(using ubuntu linux 10.04 btw)
Solution :
X
If it’s working: Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.
Ctrl-Alt-F[1-6] go to terminal.
Ctrl-Alt-F7 – go to X
Restart XDM in most distros:
/etc/init.d/xdm restart
Or find X processes PIDs
ps aux|grep "[Xx]"
and kill them. Then start new X
startx
X logs: /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Internet
Using dhcp:
dhclient interface
Interface could be eth0.
Without
ifconfig ...
or
ip
(see man for more)
Not sure how Ubuntu works, but i think you can restart your network connecting using some kind of /etc/init.d script.
Check server guide. Not sure, but I think that works for desktop edition too.
Other stuff
Useful terminal programs:
- lynx,links – internet browsers
- irssi – IRC client
- mc – file manager
- mcedit – simplest file editor ever
- GNU and system utils – basic like: cat, tail, head, cp, rm, mv – must know!
- top, ps – display Linux tasks
- free – memory usage (but remember to look at buffors table, not mem)
- man 🙂
I’m a programmer, so I use git daily.
I have found git very useful for monitoring changes (and eventually restoring in emergency cases) changes in config files.
Edit:
On my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS I do:
sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager restart
or
sudo service network-manager restart
I know this isn’t exactly what your looking for, but I found this .pdf to be a good resource for figuring out ubuntu. (Plus its free…which is always nice.)