On Mon, Dec 18, 2006 at 01:54:24PM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
X is frozen, no way to switch the console(i.e. Ctrl-Alt-F1, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace), and no way to access the machine remotely.
if you don't need X running, I'd stop loading it entirely (edit /etc/inittab, and change the default runlevel to 3), and before your app hangs, log onto the system console, and leave this command running as root...
# tail -f /var/log/messages /var/log/secure
this way, any error logging will be displayed as the system crashes.
Or, you can start your application running in X, then switch to Ctrl-Alt-F1, login there, and run the tails on the console.
If this isn't possible I would use syslog to forward *.debug to another syslog server on the microscopic chance the system has some transmitable last words.