multi-tty problems involving virtual terminal

[Stephen Berman <Stephen.Berman@gmx.net>]

GNU Emacs 23.0.50.3 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 2.10.6) of
2007-09-17 on escher

I recently updated to the post-multi-tty merge and have only begun to
experiment with it.  The first couple of uses, involving the Linux
console X client, were unproblematic, but today I unexpectedly had to
use the multi-tty functionality from a virtual terminal and ran into
some problems.  Before updating I didn't follow the various multi-tty
threads very closely, so if what I describe below has come up before,
I would appreciate a pointer and apologize for the redundancy.

I had Emacs running under X with the Emacs server started, as usual.
Suddenly X locked up, but I was able to switch to a virtual terminal
and invoked emacsclient, and everything was fine, all the buffers of
my Emacs started under X were still open.  Then I killed the X server
and restarted it.  When I logged in to the KDE desktop again, I
noticed that Emacs (still only running as a client on the virtual
terminal) was consuming 99% CPU.  I tried to exit Emacs on the virtual
terminal with C-x C-c but it failed with a message to the effect
"Cannot iconify sole frame" (I don't remember the exact wording).  I
went back to the KDE desktop and invoked emacsclient again, starting
an X client.  Then I returned to the virtual terminal and tried C-x
C-c again; this time I got the message "The server still has clients;
delete them? (yes or no)."  I type no and hit return and the virtual
terminal immediately locked up without making a line feed.  I went
back to X and the Emacs X client was gone and in the shell from which
I had invoked it was the message "Waiting for Emacs...".  The
emacsclient process launched from the virtual terminal was still
running; I killed it but still the terminal remains locked up and I do
not know how to unlock it.

Steve Berman