Re: [amd64] System lockups still continuing

On Tue, Jul 20, 2004 at 05:32:20AM -0700, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2004 16:09:19 -0500 (CDT)
> > From: "Conrad J. Sabatier" <conrads_at_cox.net>
> > 
> > 
> > On 19-Jul-2004 Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > >> 
> > >> On 18-Jul-2004 Conrad J. Sabatier wrote:
> > >> > I had posted several weeks ago about constant hard lockups of my
> > >> > amd64 box.  At first, I attributed the problem to GNOME, then to
> > >> > my kernel config, but now it appears to me that the problem
> > >> > really lies with Mozilla/Firefox.
> > >> 
> > >> Well, another theory bites the dust.  I tried running GNOME
> > >> yesterday, never touched Mozilla or Firefox, and the system locked
> > >> up while doing some file management chores in Nautilus.
> > >> 
> > >> It must be something low-level in GNOME, some shared library,
> > >> probably, but I have yet to track it down.
> > > 
> > > I have lost track of the full thread and this mail list is not
> > > tracked by google :-(, so this may have been ruled out. Are you sure
> > > that it's not the preemption problem that is biting you? This applies
> > > to CURRENT systems only, so may not be applicable to what you are
> > > seeing, the symptoms are a match.
> > 
> > Hmm, you may be right.  Is there any workaround for this?  I've tried
> > both SCHED_ULE and SCHED_4BSD, both producing the same results.
> > 
> > What's strange is that this only seems to occur when either running a
> > full-blown GNOME desktop or using some GNOME-related app under another
> > environment.
> > 
> > I'm currently working under KDE, just for comparison, and no such
> > problems have occurred, unless I try using, say, Mozilla or Firefox.
> > 
> > I'll Cc: this to current and see what they think.
> 
> The problem is not specific to ULE or 4BSD. A fix was checked in last
> night, so cvsup and rebuild might just fix it. Early reports are that
> the patch resolves the problem, but the author is not sure that this is
> a complete fix.

It is not a complete fix in i386/SMP, but seems to make it harder to
cause the lock-up.  I am not able to cause the lock-up at all simply
by disabling PREEMPTION in src/sys/param.h.

-- 
Brian Fundakowski Feldman                           \'[ FreeBSD ]''''''''''\
  <> green_at_FreeBSD.org                               \  The Power to Serve! \
 Opinions expressed are my own.                       \,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,\