Mysterious system freeze-ups on my consoles...

From: Barry Bouwsma (freebsd-misuser_at_remove-NOSPAM-to-reply.NOSPAM.dyndns.dk)
Date: 12/26/04

  • Next message: M. Warner Losh: "Re: parameters for tsleep(9)" 
    Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 21:40:16 +0100 (CET)
To: Hackers United <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org>

    Howdy.

    I've had this problem on FreeBSD 4.x for some time, on occasion.
    What happens is that when using a handful of full-screen applications
    on the normal syscons consoles (alt-F1 on up), the system occasionally
    locks up entirely right as I'm doing some navigation on the screen.

    I can't get into the debugger, or do anything at all from the console,
    the machine has suddenly completely wedged, and whatever else it may
    have been doing stops. (I haven't tried a remote console debugger.)

    What would cause such a total lockup -- would it be interrupt/locking
    related? I'm ignorant here.

    This happens when I'm online, networked, as the full-screen applications
    (lynx and links web browsers) don't really work without a network
    connection, and it has definitely happened when I've been connected
    over dial-in PPP via a serial port, and more recently I believe I've
    been connected via a USB-attached ethernet adapter.

    I don't recall it happening at any time when I was connected via an
    internal ISA or PCI network card. Is it possible that these freezes
    are related to the serial port, or over USB?

    One almost sure-fire way for it to happen with serial-port PPP was to
    expand a menu of items to select. Recently the freezes happened rather
    regularly viewing Google with lynx going off the top line to the input
    field. Version of lynx made no difference, and `links' had the same
    problem somewhere.

    Running `lynx' in an xterm, I simply haven't had this problem at all.
    Nor does normal console use, as far as I can see.

    4.x kernel is more than half a year old but I've had the problem for
    at least a year; have not tried a newer kernel yet.

    Please let me know if my hypothesis that data arriving via the serial
    port or via USB combined with cons25-type screen activity could be
    the cause of this, or if it's just coincidence, as well as what is
    likely to cause a complete solid wedge, for my education. Thanks.

    barry bouwsma

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  • Next message: M. Warner Losh: "Re: parameters for tsleep(9)"

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