[NBLUG/talk] Can't connect to the Internet

[Troy Arnold]

On Thu, Jan 31, 2008 at 08:48:40AM -0800, Roger House wrote:
> Yesterday while using my Ubuntu machine to work on a remote machine via
> VPN (using vpnc), my keyboard locked up.  The mouse cursor still worked,
> but there seemed to be no way to get back to Ubuntu on my local machine.
> In desperation (and perhaps foolishly), I hit the reset button. 

I see Barry answered the hard part, so here's another tip:

If you want to restart a machine whose display or keyboard is hosed, you
can ssh in (assuming ssh is enabled) from another machine and type
sudo /sbin/reboot or sudo /sbin/poweroff.  In many cases you'd probably be
able to fix the issue without restarting by doing:
  sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart
(where gdm is your display manager.  Other common DM's are xdm and kdm)


If you're concerned about running sshd, you can add the line,
ALL: ALL 
to /etc/hosts.deny
and 
sshd: 192.168.1.
to /etc/hosts.allow.  
That will deny sshd for everyone not in 192.168.1.0/24.  You can also use
specific hosts instead of a range:
sshd: 192.168.1.10
sshd: 192.168.1.7

I hope I haven't drifted too far OT with this but I rely on ssh so much
that I can't imagine not having it available.

-troy