Mac OS X Desktop can ‘freeze’. You can still move your mouse but you won’t be able to close/start anything. But the system is still running. I find Mac OS X is a solid system.
If you have something running in the background (like mysql/apache), you don’t want to restart the whole machine. To restart the desktop,
1. go to another machine, start a SSH terminal (such as putty on a windows box). SSh into mac os x.
If your mac is not configured to allow SSH, you have no option but to restart the machine, configure it in the System Preferences button and wait for the next.
2. ps -ef|grep Graphics
3. Find the following:
88 83 1 0 12:25.22 ?? 27:22.37 /System/Library/Frameworks/ApplicationServices.framework/Frameworks/CoreGraphics.framework/Resources/WindowServer -daemon
4. then HUP the found process:
sudo kill -HUP 83
83 is the process id. 88 is the userid so don’t be fool if you come from the Linux environment.
That’s the benefit to have a Unix OS!!!
This will restart the GUI, logging you out, but at least you won’t have to reboot the whole machine.