Re: that X/Gnome lockup thing. How to trace it?

[Paul Johnson <pauljohn ukans edu>]

Ali Abdin wrote:
> 
> > In my local Linux user group, I mentioned that my RH 6.1 system was
> > locking up. I'd never had a lockup in linux for 3 years, until Gnome
> > 1.2.1 made its appearance.  Several people chimed in with the same
> > complaint.  Then I put it together with the mentions of lockups in this
> > list and I started to wonder if the problem might be widespread.
> 
> Repeat after me. Lock-ups are _NOT_ the fault of GNOME. If something
> locks up COMPLETELY it is either 'X' or 'Linux' itself - It could be X
> itself dying but locking up the keyboard and mouse - Or it could be a
> kernel problem, obviously.

You can't categorically say that Gnome is not causing/related-to these
lockups. The common element running across all of these stories is that
systems running Gnome lock up and the same people say that if they run
KDE or no environment they don't have the problem.  It could be some
interaction between Gnome/gdk/imlib and X, I dunno.  Most people I talk
to have compiled kernels in order to find out if they have hardware
problems (watching for sig-11) and, unlike me, they say the problem
happens even when they have spare memory.

FWIW, Here is another desription of the problem from a fellow user in my
area.

" I saw the same problem a few
days ago on my system (RedHat 6.2 using Gnome).  The symptoms were:
1. Mouse and keyboard completely locked up
2. All ports locked up (ie could not telnet or ftp to any port on the
box)
3. IPmasq and TCP/IP stack were still working.  I have this machine set
up as
a firewall, and my Windows machine behind the firewall could still
access the
internet.
4. I had to push the reset button to get the machine to respond again."




-- 
Paul E. Johnson                       email: pauljohn@ukans.edu
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66045                FAX: (785) 864-5700