Re: strange problem in X

David L. Gehrt (dlg@serena.arc.nasa.gov)
Fri, 25 Jun 1999 15:07:48 -0700


Well let me be (among) the first to tell that I am having the same sort of
problems with X on my Uniprocessor. It is an P233-MMX on an Asus TX97-XE
mobo. I use a serial Logitech Marble. I am running XFree 3.3.2.3 from the RH
5.2 CDROM. Interestingly enough I just looked and the Kernel is 2.2.3, but
apparently compiled with SMP set, even though the system IS a uniprocessor.
The kernel was compiled with GCC 2.7.2.3. BUT this has been an occasional
problem with X back a couple of years ago with a 2.0.X kernel from a Slackware
distribution. I am afraid I do not recall which release of XFree. I believe
that it happened under the XFree with Slackware 3.[246] but I am not sure.

When this started I was using an AMD486 DX4-133 processor. At one point I
thought that it might be caused by the AGX driver and.or my Spider BlackWidow+
VLB interface card, but it is now happening with my Matrox Mystique board.
When these problems got started, I posted a message on a mailing list, but only
heard from one person who was having problems, and we could not figure the
problem out. (I am not an X Window System (or any other sort of) rocket
scientist.

The symptoms are similar to some reported earlier -- some times (like this
afternoon) the reset button is the only relief. Other times I can log in
remotely from one of the other systems on the local lan and recover the system
usually by killing X via a "telinit 3" command. I tend to favor the X problem
hypothesis but I am willing to try anything.

I use Fvwm95-2, and the problem SEEMS to be most often triggered when I select
A new desktop, and often that is involving a switch to a Netscape browser,
however this after noons lock up was just a switch to an Xterm on a remote
(over a ppp link) system.

I think that this does not matter, but here it is. I have three system on this
local subnet, and they all use the same monitor, keyboard and mouse connected
through an Omniview 4 port cpu switch. The lock up predate the switch and even
my home network, and the additional systems. I have experienced no problems
with XF3.3.3.1 and RH6.0 on either Intel or SPARC platforms, but th SPARC has
not been heavily used since the arrival of RH 6.0.

If I can provide additional data let me know. I am off to build a kernel w/o
the SMP stuff enabled, although I am not clear on what effect that might have
given that I have a uniprocessor system. I have been ready to upgrade to the
latest 2.2 kernel for a while, I just haven't had time.

<snip>

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