Stop data loss even on system crash? Remember BUSIER

Scarlett Clark scarlett at manonthebench.com
Mon Jun 29 08:48:24 MST 2009


Wow , nice to know. 
Thanks,
Scarlett

On Mon, 2009-06-29 at 08:40 -0700, Ryan Rix wrote:
> Hey,
> 
> Ever wonder what the SysRq key does on your computer? Most people have no idea 
> that this can be one of the biggest lifesavers in a sticky situation.
> 
> When your system hardlocks, either from a nasty process, a bug in X, or for 
> some other reason, you risk losing gobs of data if you have to take your 
> system offline. Journaling filesystems alleviate this issue to some extent but 
> data loss is always a huge risk when taking a system down hard.
> 
> But, one simple word can help you take this risk to virtually 0 the next time 
> you must take a system down hard (holding the power button for 5 seconds): 
> BUSIER - or backwards REISUB, more accurately
> 
> R - resets the keyboard driver to raw mode
> E - Sends term to all running processes
> I - sends kill signal to all processes
> S - Syncs all mounted partitions
> U - unmount the filesystems and remount as read only
> B - reboot
> 
> Pressing alt-SysRq and the keys above will send a command to the kernel (by 
> passing X, applications and other things which may be causing the hardlock. 
> This simple method is failsafe and will work in all situations except 
> situations in which the kernel is busy, rather than an application. In that 
> situation there is little you can do but hope and pray that the Journal holds.
> 
> Ryan.
> 
>  
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