Date: Sun, 26 Dec 2004 21:40:16 +0100 (CET) From: Barry Bouwsma <freebsd-misuser@remove-NOSPAM-to-reply.NOSPAM.dyndns.dk> To: Hackers United <freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org> Subject: Mysterious system freeze-ups on my consoles... Message-ID: <200412262040.iBQKeFW02748@Mail.NOSPAM.DynDNS.dK>
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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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