DVI monitor won't wake up?

[Ben Scott]

On 4/4/06, Cole Tuininga <colet at code-energy.com> wrote:
>> What about the "magic SysRq keys"?
>
> Hmmm - this is new to me.  I've heard the term before, but never knew
> what it was.

  Basically, if enabled, they are a set of keystrokes that tell the
kernel to do certain things.  Examples: Sync disks; reset keyboard;
re-mount all filesystems read-only; reboot; power off.  They're
occasionally useful when the system is *really* hosed, as they will
often survive when everything else is dead.

  Google for "magic sysrq" for all the details.

  One thing I've used this for before is recovering from a crashed X
server.  [Alt]+[SysRq]+[R] resets the keyboard.  At that point, I can
type, although the display is still hosed.  So [Alt]+[F1] switches to
VC1.  Then I login as root (blindly), and issue a "vga_reset" command
(which I think I got as a demo program from svgalib).

> Is there any easy way to see if it's enabled in my
> kernel ... remotely?  8)

cat /proc/sys/kernel/sysrq

  If 0, present but disabled.  If 1, present and enabled.  If not
found, not present in the kernel.

  The more I think about it, the more I think all this may not help. 
The fact that the card stays hosed over a warm reboot implies the
card's internal hardware state is really fscked up.  It might even be
faulty hardware -- have you tested this with *ahem* "other" OSes?

-- Ben