Most crashes on Mint and Ubuntu are caused by an unresponsive X Server or because Cinnamon has frozen up so it’s worth trying these easy fixes first.
# Option 1 = restart Cinnamon via command box
1. Alt + F2 on your keyboard
1. Type "r" in the "Enter a command" box
1. Press Enter
# Option 2 = kill X server via keyboard
Control + Alt + Backspace
# Option 3 = restart Cinnamon via command line
cinnamon --replace
# Option 4 = restart display manager
sudo systemctl restart lightdm
This opens a tty prompt allowing you to run some commands to stop whatever has frozen your machine. The name of the program that ctrl alt F1 uses is called getty (or agetty). There are multiple virtual consoles available on F1 - F6.
Ctrl + Alt F1
This step isn’t totally necessary as there are ways to indiscriminately kill
processes by name (killall and pkill) but I think it’s good practice to
target only the process that is causing the problem.
pgrepIf you know what process has caused the crash then you can use either pgrep or
pidof to find the process id of the offending package. Although both these
tools do pretty much the same job I prefer using pgrep because the regex
matching of the process name is real handy.
# Best option = pgrep
# (uses regex for matching name of process)
# (output is a line-broken list in numerical order)
root@planetroast:~$ pgrep chrome
116029
117032
# 2nd best option = pidof
# (output is a space separated string)
# (requires the exact name of the process)
root@planetroast:~$ pidof chrome
116029 117032
# Alternative option = ps
# (might not be installed by default on your system)
# (you'll need the grep because the list will be huge)
# (the aux flags relate to filtering the results)
root@planetroast:~$ ps aux | grep chrome
root 116029 6.9 16.1 25840080 1219964 ? Sl Jul30 520:17 /usr/lib/firefox/firefox
topThe top package should be installed on your system by default and it shows a
real time view of your system including a list of processes and how much CPU and
memory they are eating up. By default the list is sorted by CPU usage so your
offending package should be near the top of the list.
root@planetroast:~$ top
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
138426 root 20 0 3099388 348192 112884 S 99.7 44.6 48:06.94 Isolated Web Co
116029 root 20 0 16.6g 1.2g 289412 S 0.7 16.0 519:17.76 firefox-bin
549 kernoops 20 0 11252 444 0 S 0.3 0.0 0:35.40 kerneloops
169975 root 20 0 2657568 199332 99184 S 0.3 2.6 7:25.30 Isolated Web Co
176319 root 20 0 2672828 202964 98400 S 0.3 2.7 7:28.09 Isolated Web Co
There’s a similar package available called htop which does the same job but
looks a bit nicer and has some useful features such as search and filtering. It
also lets you kill a process straight from the package which saves you step.
Only downside of htop is that it probably won’t be installed by default so
might not be an option in the event of a crash.
The -9 indicates the type of signal sent, 9 being the signal for ‘kill’ which
forces the termination of a process. Another commonly used signal is -15 which
sends the more graceful termination signal. There are a bunch more of these but
those are the two you’ll use the most.
# Option 1 (kills a specific process)
kill -9 your-pid-here
# Option 2 (kills all processes by name)
# (requires exact process name)
killall -9 chrome
# Option 3 (kills all processess by name)
# (uses regex for matching name of process)
pkill -9 chrome
Now that your process has (hopefully) shut down and your system is back to normal you can switch back to the GUI and continue doing your work.
Ctrl + Alt F7