Control+Alt+Backspace shortcut does not restart the X server

Control+Alt+Backspace shortcut does not restart the X server

Edit: I believe this was removed because the kernal already contained another combo that does the same job, Alt+SysReq+k will terminate and restart X if it should become unresponsive.

If you would prefer the old key combination then issue the following two commands in a terminal. I would advise against this though, but as always, the choice is entirely yours.

sudo apt-get install dontzap

then do:

sudo dontzap –disable

X server gives error and won't load.

I got asked to look at one my parents PC's a couple days ago as it had 'locked up'. Upon investigation it hadn't locked up but the motherboard had fatally broken with the PS2 and USB ports left lifeless. I was able to SSH into it and the machine was just fine.

I wasn't able to easily get any data off the HD while in the case so popped it out and took it home, plugged it into another of my own PC's and booted it up. GDM failed to come up and I was greeted with the typical "X has failed to start" message and dumped to a prompt. Not a problem, I've been here before and we can fix that in a jiffy.

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

Go through the various questions, most of which are pretty simple and you can pretty much take the defaults in my experience.

A quick reboot:

sudo shutdown -r now

or a faster restart of gdm (the login manager)

/etc/init.d/gdm restart

Everything should be fine when it comes back up.