Re: [amd64] System lockups still continuing

> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 11:20:44 -0400
> From: Brian Fundakowski Feldman <green_at_freebsd.org>
> 
> 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,

Thanks for the information. In my case it's i386/UP. I am currently
building a new kernel and will try it out soon. When I had the problem,
it showed up reliably in a buildworld, so I will fire off one as soon as
the new kernel is up.

I tried disabling PREEMPTION, but the system was barely usable whenever
it was running anything that was CPU intensive (such as compiling a
port), so I backed out the changes instead. While this works, it is
something I want to get away from ASAP.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman_at_es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634