<p>In two earlier episodes I have been talking about digiKam photo
management software. I hope to come back to that topic in another
episode in the future. But not today.</p>
<p>Today I will talk about what happened to me about two weeks ago.
Maybe it was because I had used the hibernate state, which I rarely use,
that caused my laptop to behave somewhat strange. So I decided to turn
it off. It was my Lenovo Thinkpad T460p laptop, running Linux Mint
Debian Edition.</p>
<p>So I turned it off the normal way with the soft button inside the
operating system. But instead of power off I was shown a full terminal
screen with a lot of text what it was doing. But it never came to the
conclusion to turn off.</p>
<p>I have learned that in those situations, although tempting, that on
Linux I should not force turn off with the physical mechanical power
button. I have tried that before on another Linux laptop, and it was not
a success, rather the opposite.</p>
<p>What I should do with Linux is to talk with electrodes directly to
the central brain, or in other words, call the Linux kernel with help of
a system request and by that sidestep the operating system.</p>
<p>A System Request is done with the SysRq key on the keyboard. In this
situation I did the reisub key sequence with a system request:</p>
<p>If I hold the System Request key together with the Alternate Alt key,
and when still holding them down, I type the letters r, e, i, s, u and
b, one by one in a very slow pace, I take seconds between them. Then I
release all keys and the machine reboots.</p>
<p>This was very successful for me and the laptop has since then worked
as normal.</p>
<p>I use an external full size keyboard that has a System Request
key.</p>
<p>But not all laptops has such a key any more. System Request can be
reached also on all or most of those laptops with some key combination.
But that key combination varies between manufacturers and models.</p>
<p>In the show notes I add a link to a How to geek article about reisub
as well as to Wikipedia about System Request:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>How-To Geek: <a
href="https://www.howtogeek.com/119127/use-the-magic-sysrq-key-on-linux-to-fix-frozen-x-servers-cleanly-reboot-and-run-other-low-level-commands/#cleanly-restarting-your-system">Cleanly
Restarting Your System. Use the Magic SysRq Key on Linux to Fix Frozen X
Servers, Cleanly Reboot, and Run Other Low-Level Commands</a></p></li>
<li><p>Wikipedia: <a
href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key">Magic SysRq
key</a></p></li>
</ul>
