| 1 |
On Monday 18 January 2010 22:47:05 Dale wrote: |
| 2 |
> In that case, ctrl alt F1 does nothing. You also need to understand |
| 3 |
> that most people don't even know how to use SysRq keys. I didn't and |
| 4 |
> had to do a hard shutdown. I had to actually pull the plug to do any |
| 5 |
> good. Luckily I knew how to get it to boot into single user mode so I |
| 6 |
> could disable hal otherwise I would be right back on the same screen |
| 7 |
> again with no mouse or keyboard. It would be really bad if even that |
| 8 |
> didn't work with devicekit. I'm not sure how it couldn't but we never |
| 9 |
> know do we? |
| 10 |
|
| 11 |
Dale's experiences highlight a very important and very fundamental rule of |
| 12 |
desktop system design: |
| 13 |
|
| 14 |
As a developer you must completely and totally guarantee to the full limit of |
| 15 |
what is feasible, that the user will always have a usable keyboard, mouse and |
| 16 |
display after the desktop has launched. You can fallback to VGA resolution and |
| 17 |
the most basic keyboard layout possible if you need to, but you must give the |
| 18 |
user something and never leave them stranded. Anything else is just an epic |
| 19 |
fail. |
| 20 |
|
| 21 |
Magic SysRq falls so far short of this that it's not even worth contemplating. |
| 22 |
It's useful for mega-power users and kernel devs doing really way out things, |
| 23 |
but for normal users it might as well be invisible. Sure, it's documented in |
| 24 |
/usr/src/linux/Documentation/sysrq.txt. Well now, I offer two comments: |
| 25 |
|
| 26 |
I doubt that kernel docs are even installed on most user-centric distros, and |
| 27 |
anyone want to present an argument why the location of that file and it's |
| 28 |
contents might be construed as being "self-evident and/or obvious"? |
| 29 |
|
| 30 |
|
| 31 |
-- |
| 32 |
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com |
Archives