I'm not sure if this is a NetBSD or an XFree86 question.  However...

On several of my machines, on some occasions when I exit X the screen 
is in "weird mode", and the keyboard is doing something strange.  Is 
there some easy way to reset the screen to VGA mode, and turn off all 
mappings of the keyboard?  If nothing else, I'd love to wrap X in 
something like that; failing that, I'm frequently in a position where I 
can log into the machine remotely.  I'd love to have a better answer 
than to reboot.

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
		Full text of "Firewalls" book now at http://www.wilyhacker.com