From: balasub@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Krishna Balasubramanian) Subject: Re: Freeze up on X Date: 22 Jan 1993 09:32:38 -0500
This is unrelated to X-freez-ups on special vga hardware that
some people have reported.
Linux should behave even when pushed too hard. You should not push
the system too hard but when you do the resulting behaviour is
potentially useful for detecting bugs in the kernel.
I'm testing some code which swaps heavilly but have yet to see a
total freeze-up (0.99.3). True one loses control of the mouse or the
mouse moves uncontrollably. The way to deal with this is to be patient.
You could use some key bindings in ~/.twmrc to allow you to walk the
twm menu.
If you wait long enough the thrashing should cease as the swapping
reaches a steady state. If you get tired of the thrashing walk the
menu and kill an application or so. The menu will also likely not
display its current state ... so do things slowly.
Log the printk's especially the first one in a sequence. A printk can
cause a sleep so later errors in critical code may be a result of the
first printk.
Hit the reset button if you know better than I do.
krishna