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Date:      Tue, 26 Mar 1996 18:40:01 -0500 (EST)
From:      John Brann <jbrann@panix.com>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Cc:        hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   iijppp problems - related to interrupts?
Message-ID:  <199603262340.SAA02049@jbrann.dialup.access.net>

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Hi,

I've been using iijppp, and its dial-on-demand facility, for over six months,
pretty much since it first became available in a snapshot release.  I have
encountered occasional sig 10s - which is annoying since it forces me to 
restart the ppp program manually.  I've tried investigating this problem,
without much success.  I rebuilt the program with -g, and tried gdb on 
the core file, with no consistent results.  However, one trend is 
definite.  The lifetime of a ppp process before I get a sig 10 is related 
to the uptime of my machine.  Abends in the first 24 hours are very rare, 
but by the time the machine has been up for a week, ppp won't usually last
24 hours.

One other thing is consistent - the crash occurs when the ppp program is very
busy, for instance when it first connects to my ISP and goes through
the handshaking procedure (this is the most common point for a failure) or
transferring a large file or web page from a fast site.

Today I was looking at my system performance using Xperfmon++, to se if that
could give me a clue - and it may have done, hence the title of my e-mail
(finally, he gets to the point :-).

When not connected through ppp, my machine runs at about 250 interrupts / sec.
This seems to be a fairly sensible level for a machine running X with half
a dozen windows open.  If I ping a remote site, ppp dials and connects,
and at the moment of connection, Xperfmon++ reports over 4500 interrupts /
sec.  This seems a bit high.  Contacting a graphics-intensive web site
can cause spikes at over 11000 /sec.

All this is happening on a single dial-up line which normally connects at
14.4.  port speed is 115200, kernel reports of overflows are very rare 
(maybe once a month, usually when I'm doing a big make and downloading at
the same time).

Hardware is Pentium 60 with 32Mb memory and Adaptec 2940 driving the
peripherals.  The async card is (very) generic.

Is anyone else suffering similar sig 10 abends with ppp?
Is the interrupt level extraordinary?
If so, what can I do - is it a hardware problem?

I'm copying this to 'hackers' since I think it's a bit advanced for 
'questions'.

TIA

John

-- 
Beavis and Butt-Head;  Vladimir and Estragon for the '90s.

finger jbrann@panix.com for pgp public key



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