When it comes to rebooting a frozen Linux system, QWERTY keyboard users have it easy; spell “busier” backwards or simply raise some elephants.
Typing REISUB gets a little trickier on alternative keyboard layouts, however. While the familiar fancypants GUI might be properly informed of an unusual key arrangement, these low-level kernel commands remain forever mapped to their original QWERTY locations. What used to be REISUB on a QWERTY keyboard becomes P.COGX on Dvorak, and PFURLB on Colemak. I use a custom variant of Colemak with a few keys switched around to my personal preference. On this layout, REISUB becomes GFUSLB.
But is it really such a great idea to blindly reboot your computer immediately after it has catastrophically frozen? When I realize I’ve done something bad enough to make my Linux system freeze, I like to take a short breather, power down, and think about what went wrong. I like to have a chance to think about what I need to do when the system boots back up. I might, for example, have to catch GRUB to insert a one-time boot option, and with only a three-second time window to do that, I have to know it ahead of time. So instead of REISUB, I really prefer to turn off the system with REISUO, or on my keyboard layout, GFUSLY.
That’s really hard to remember. It’s not even pronounceable – So what’s needed here is a good mnemonic. I asked around and got the following suggestions:
- Gentlemen fight under supervision of loving yodelers.
- Get four unique slugs loudly yawning.
- Go find us some lentils yonder.
That last one stuck best, and I’ve since used it several times to shut down frozen systems.
