Hangup of graphis screen

[cbas25 at vaxa.strath.ac.uk]

 Re.  Problems associated with resetting the graphics when they
are hungup.
There are two methods which will allow you to clear the problem and 
continue working:-
(1)  Press F12 and the '/'key at the top of the numeric keypad 
     simultaneously while holding down <CTRL> and <SHIFT>.
     This kills the all proceeses of the user who is logged in at
     the graphics console, and returns to the login screen. This
     is a little better than pressing the reset button, but is
     possible from a terminal remote from the processor cabinet.      
(2) Have a second slave terminal connected, and while logged in 
     on this terminal (either as root or the same user id as on the
     graphics terminal),  do:-
                          ps -e.  
     This will give you the pid of the offending process, and
     then do:- 
                          kill <pid> from this terminal.

I have a feeling that in earlier versions of the operating system doing
'gclear' from the slave terminal would kill a graphics process;  now it
halts the graphics temporarily and creates weird colours, but then the
graphics reappears as normal.  Can anybody remember whether this is so;
if it is its not much use now anyway!!
Peter Bladon.