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Magic SysRq

SysRq is usually Print Screen in keyboard.

  • Ctrl+Z: pause a process (plus bg to resume in the background, fg to raise to foreground)
  • Ctrl+C: politely ask the process to shut down now
  • Ctrl+\: mercilessly kill the process that is currently in the foreground

Push each key sequentially.

  • Alt+SysRq+s: Write data to disk (always do this before killing anything important)
  • Alt+SysRq+s, k: mercilessly kill all current processes on a given virtual console
  • Alt+SysRq+s, b: mercilessly reboot without unmounting,
  • Alt+SysRq+r, e, i, s, u, b: Safely reboot even if the system is utterly broken