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Date:      Sat, 5 Aug 1995 23:03:36 +0100 (BST)
From:      Nik Clayton <Nik.Clayton@brunel.ac.uk>
To:        questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   System freezes after inactivity
Message-ID:  <2323.9508052203@mishmash.brunel.ac.uk>

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How do,

Been an interesting day all told. . .

I have a 486/66 (EISA, 16Mb RAM) running 2.0R. Does the job very nicely.
However, ever since I've been running 2.0R on it the system has
exhibited a tendency to lock-up when it's not doing anything.

By 'lock-up', I mean completely freeze. Almost. If I switch virtual
consoles (this only happens in text mode) and then switch back to the
first console then it recovers, and all my keystrokes entered when it
locked are apparent. These lock-ups tend to happen after more than 30
seconds of inactivity, and can occur at the login prompt or at a command
line.

And then I discovered a fix. Sort of. One of my projects has been a
small audio multicast daemon that multicasts /dev/audio around the local
network. Whenever this program is running (which is now most of the
time) the lockups never happen. Presumably because the kernel is always
having to do something every second, and so doesn't find the time to
contemplate it's own navel.

Today I tried to migrate to 2.0.5, partly because I like the cleaner
administration setup, partly because I wanted to use some of the new
ports, and partly because it has support for the CD-ROM drive in my
machine.

Complete disaster. The lockups became more frequent, and would occur
after as little as 10 seconds of inactivity.

For what it's worth, I get the same results with the on-chip cache
turned on or off.

I've just finished (almost) re-installing 2.0 and restoring from
backups. I realise I haven't really presented a whole lot of information
(and I'm not too fussed, since (a) the problem is effectively gone on
this machine and (b) I haven't seen anyone else report anything similar,
so I think it's more likely to be a hardware or similar problem at my
end) but I present this as a possibly interesting datapoint.

N
=-[Opinion, n: See the above text for an example]=-=[Kibo #: e]-[RYRYRY]=-=
=-[The Silly Sod Society: To perfect and to swerve]=-[beable]-=[TP U BG]=-=
Other things you could have removed while you waited were your wallet, 
your stomach lining, your mind and your will to live.  The muggers and 
pushers and pimps and hamburger salesmen, in no particular order, could
arrange these things for you.



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