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Date:      Tue, 21 Aug 2012 21:28:23 -0600
From:      Gary Aitken <freebsd@dreamchaser.org>
To:        FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   9.0 release not dead but barely breathing after idling
Message-ID:  <503451D7.9040107@dreamchaser.org>

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Aargh...
So my 9.0 RELEASE system no longer totally hangs when sitting idle...
it seems to run quite a bit longer, waking up from screen blanking in general
even after long (overnight) periods of sitting idle.  However, not always.

X (screen was allowed to blank after 10 min, I'm testing w/ that off now.)
blanked the screen.
I come back after a few hrs of the system doing nothing (leaving a lot of stuff open, esp in firefox) and the screen is blank (expected) but doesn't wake up.

I can ping from another machine, but not rlogin (no response).  
That seems weird.  
/var/log/messages shows no activity around attempted rlogin time
Previously, before I turned off memory hole mapping in bios,
it would go totally dead, but now it's clearly breathing.
Power switch doesn't do a soft reboot, 
but I haven't tested it independently to see if it works at all.
Will do that on next reboot.

Question:

If one does <ctl><alt>D to get out of X,
how does that affect things?
i.e. Since there is no active X display,
what happens if a process tries to repaint?
Does this effectively take display hardware out of the picture
for troubleshooting? 

Output from "last":

garya      pts/5    nightmare              Tue Aug 21 18:26 - 18:26  (00:00)
garya      pts/3    :0                     Tue Aug 21 17:12   still logged in
garya      pts/2    :0                     Tue Aug 21 17:12   still logged in
garya      pts/0    :0                     Tue Aug 21 17:12   still logged in
garya      pts/1    :0                     Tue Aug 21 17:12   still logged in
garya      pts/4    :0                     Tue Aug 21 17:12   still logged in
garya      ttyv0                           Tue Aug 21 17:08   still logged in
boot time                                  Tue Aug 21 17:06
garya      pts/3    :0                     Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22)
garya      pts/4    :0                     Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22)
garya      pts/2    :0                     Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22)
garya      pts/1    :0                     Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22)
garya      pts/0    :0                     Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22)
root       ttyv4                           Sun Aug 19 15:42 - crash (2+01:23)
garya      pts/4    :0                     Sun Aug 19 15:15 - 15:41  (00:25)

I discovered the system was hung and rebooted around Aug 21 17:06.
Why is no crash recorded on Aug 21?
  The system was working (behaving normally) until at least ~ Aug 21 15:00
  Since I could ping it around Aug 21 17:00,
  but then did a forced power down in order to reboot,
  shouldn't that show as a crash or something?
Why is there no boot recorded soon after Aug 19 15:44?  (I did reboot)
Why does the first entry for garya after boot show still logged in?
  Is this because the records are based on the utx.log file,
  and the system crashed, so it looks like I'm still logged in?

/var/log/cron shows:

Aug 21 13:11:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10699]: (operator) CMD (/usr/libexec/save-entropy)
Aug 21 13:15:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10717]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
Aug 21 13:20:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10719]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
Aug 21 13:22:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10721]: (operator) CMD (/usr/libexec/save-entropy)
Aug 21 13:25:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10733]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
Aug 21 17:10:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[1878]: (root) CMD (/usr/libexec/atrun)
Aug 21 17:11:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[1882]: (operator) CMD (/usr/libexec/save-entropy)

So it appears the system went south around Aug 21 13:25

Anything else I should look at for hints?
Any suggestions for how to narrow this down further other than:
  disabling X screen blanking
  <ctl><alt>D to get out of X prior to leaving machine idle

Thanks for any suggestions,

gary



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