Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Fri, 3 Aug 2001 08:11:33 -0700
From:      William Richard <wdr@tdl.com>
To:        j mckitrick <jcm@freebsd-uk.eu.org>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: moving to XFree86-4
Message-ID:  <01080308113300.00854@saffron.my.domain>
In-Reply-To: <20010803154352.A25257@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>
References:  <20010802112630.A9855@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org> <01080212254800.01448@saffron.my.domain> <20010803154352.A25257@dogma.freebsd-uk.eu.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Friday 03 August 2001 07:43, j mckitrick wrote:
> | Before you deinstall all of your X ports, make sure the new X
> | server works.  And make sure you can go back to 3.3.6 relatively
> | expeditiously (mv /usr/X11R6 /usr/X11backup).  The XFree86-4 X
> | server dumped core on my allegedly-supported Matrox Mystique
> | shortly after starting, so I never got past the configuration.  If
> | I hadn't had the old X11R6 directory backed up, I would have been
> | mightily screwed.
>
> I ran XFree86 -configure, then ran it again using that file.  I got a
> signal 10 error, and a core dump.  Does a signal 10 under XFree86
> mean the same as a signal 10 in make world, namely bad memory?

From <sys/signal.h>:
	#define SIGBUS          10      /* bus error */

This would seem to indicate not "bad memory", but "bad bus", if it 
indicates anything about the hardware at all.  But it doesn't 
necessarily--I occassionally get sig 11s from a few "known suspects" 
(some KDE-related programs), but they don't adversely affect how I use 
my machine, and I can make buildworld without a care.  If I started 
getting random sig 11s from programs that I know to work on other 
people's machines (ppp, for instance, or lpd) that I would begin to 
view my memory modules with a suspicious eye.

It is possible to write a program which generates a sig 11 (or a sig 
10) without having bad equipment.  Dereferencing an uninitialised 
pointer is a good way to get a sig 11.  So copping a sig 10/11 is not 
necessarily indicative of bad memory or bad bus, rather, it could 
indicate bad programmer.  It's when you get these errors in programs 
that are known to work consistently on everyone else's machines (make 
buildworld on -STABLE, for instance, with no obvious complaints on the 
freebsd-stable list) that you should consider bad hardware.

(Finally, after reading every one else's posts about how XFree86-4 
works flawlessly on their machines, let me indulge in a degree of 
schadenfraude...

[ ... ]

... okay, I'm done.)

-- 
Cheers,
William Richard
wdr@tdl.com

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?01080308113300.00854>