Catastrophic crash and reinstallation of LM17.3

[xfrank]

Well, not sure if this topic fit here, but anyway....
Yesterday I experienced for the first time since 2012 a catastrophic crash of the system. I had to reinstall all (no loss of data, fortunately).
I have LM17.3 Cinnamon 64bit in a homemade rig: corei3 + SSD + HD + 8GB ram.
In short:
1 - I tried to format an old flash memory
2 - The memory was probably corrupted, and "froze" LM, I had to do a reboot
3 - When restarting, the screen was stuck on the LM logo (no access to any menu, nor to command line)
4 - I tried several time to reboot, no luck.
5 - I managed to enter the recovery menu, entered the option to repair all files. Nothing.
6 - I gived up. I entered my system via live USB and saved my most "essential" files
7 - I download a fresh image of LM17.3 Cinnamon, create a new USB whit it, and started the normal process of installation
8 - All went fine, I had, however, to adjust and tweak several things, dowload and istall programs, customize a bit, etc. About 3 hours of work.
9 - Late in the night I discovered that the LM site was hacked. I was concerned for my instalation.
10 - I checked carefully md5sum and apparently all was legit.

So, I'm puzzled about this crash. What happened?! Anyone guys had a similar problem? I'm concerned about the reliability of Linux: isn't it solid like a rock?!

[austin.texas]

You can cause damage to the file system by rebooting using the power switch. That is probably what occurred.

[oldcharlie]

I read somewhere on this forum that you can close a non responding application with:

Code: Select all

 Alt F4    

and you can safely reboot Linux by:

Code: Select all

 hold down the Alt & Printscreen keys and typing REISUB   

I have used both commands numerous times since reading about them and can say that they work without any problem on my machine using Mint 17.3 Cinnamon (64 bit).

Just repeating general information and apologize for not remembering who posted it originally.

[Turgid]

Grub was probably trying to find the flash drive. It will go into a error loop for minutes before giving up and booting Mint. That's what happened to me. Black screen . Go for a coffee. come back to a mint screen.

[xfrank]

Interesting. I did wait for about ten minutes, but the mint logo was still stuck. Maybe I had to wait a bit more...

Thanks for this advice, and for the other possible actions ( Alt F4 or hold down the Alt & Printscreen keys and typing REISUB ). Next time (crossing fingers) I will try those commands.
I still believe in the reliability of Linux, it's just that the Penguin is so reliable, that in the rare cases something goes wrong, one is caught by surprise.

I also was scared about the hacking of the LM image, but fortunately I downloaded it in a "safe" day and from a "safe" mirror site (a US University).