Date: 09 Sep 1997 01:47 EDT From: "Andrew Atrens" <atrens@nortel.ca> To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: re:Help! keyboard lockups - could be kernel bug ? Message-ID: <199709090549.WAA05083@hub.freebsd.org>
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Hi again, Last week I wrote about bizarre problem I was experiencing with keyboard lockups under X. Well a week has passed and the situation has not improved despite my best efforts. Actually to be honest I'm not sure what to try next. Any pointers would be appreciated... Actually, one further clue: if I'm pounding my IDE disk ( while running xdm of course ) the keyboard will also occasionally lock up. The lock up is fairly gradual, usually starts with a single key press being missed, then a few, and then eventually ( after, say 30 seconds ) I can play `chopsticks' without effect ;) . Its almost as though the activity on the PCI bus is somehow gating the keyboard i/o... unfortunately for the keyboard its a one way trip - once its locked up its dead. One last strange observation is that, under xdm if I do a <ctrl>-<f2> to get back to the text-console, the background color of the screen changes from black to red. No such behaviour with good ol' startx ! Cheers, Andrew. ( opinions are mine, not Nortel's ) -- In message "Help! keyboard lockups - could be kernel bug ?", I wrote: > > Hi Folks, > > Last week I was happily running FreeBSD-2.2.2 on my Pentium system with an > ASUS T2P4 motherboard ( has PCI 430HX chipset ). But unfortunately I got > the upgrade itch, and moved up (?) to an ASUS TX97 ( has PCI 430TX chipset ). > > To make a long story short, 2.2.2 consistently locked up on boot - a real > showstopper. After much trial and error I discovered the culprit to be > AUTO_EOI_X kernel option(s). When I built a kernel without these options it > booted and appeared (initially at least) to function properly. > > Then, occasionally I noticed that my xdm login window was dropping characters > and locking up. Enough of that, so I downloaded the sources and built/installed > the August 08 3.0-SNAP. > > Xdm login was still dropping characters, so I went out and got Xfree86-3.3.1 > sources and rebuilt X. Xdm login was *still* dropping characters and > occasionally locking up the keyboard, so I began to look at this symptom more > closely. > > While the xdm login banner is displayed, I run an xlock -inroot -mode random > process in the background. Depending on how graphics/cpu intensive the > particular screen saver is, the lock up behaviour worsens. For example, the > lock ups are worse when running xlock in `galaxy' mode. > > Furthermore, if I get past the xdm login window, xterms and rxvts in my > session cause keyboard lockup when xlock is running `galaxy' in the root > window. > > So here's the strange thing: IF I DON'T RUN XDM, and instead just use startx > then the system behaves normally - no keyboard lockups regardless of how > hard I pound X. > > So what the heck is going on? -- What do I try next ? > > Any help would be appreciated :) > > Andrew > ( opinions are mine, not Nortels ) > > >
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