On Wed, Jan 30, 2008 at 22:12:54 +0000 (+0000), Peter Salisbury wrote:
> It's hard to investigate when the basic tools stop working! Can anyone 
> think what might be happening? Is there any way of getting ps 
> information direct from /sys or /proc or other magic to help find out 
> what's going on?
cd /proc
echo *    (an old trick which is handy when ls stops working/isn't there!)
cat */cmdline 
also, try jumping out of X into a text console, then Alt-sysrq-t dumps
running tasks (and various other keys do useful things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_SysRq_key
Adrian
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