[Linux-ia64] Re: [Ia64] Netscape (32-bit) locks machine

[Michael Madore <mmadore@turbolinux.com>]

On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Marc Aurele La France wrote:

> On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Michael Madore wrote:
> 
> > > > > I am running into an issue where Netscape will often lock up the entire
> > > > > machine when launched.  It isn't just the X Server crashing, the
> > > > > entire system is frozen.  This happens on both Rage 128 and Rage XL.  On
> > > > > the Rage XL, I virtually eliminated the lock ups by removing latin2 fonts
> > > > > from my XF86Config file.  With the Rage 128, nothing seems to help,
> > > > > including using option "noaccel" for the driver.  We are using XFree 4.0.1
> > > > > with patches (essentially the same patches that were just posted.)
> 
> > > >    Could be a bug in one of the font renderers.  I know the FreeType
> > > > renderer has some bugs.  
> 
> > > Ummm.  Looks like there are similar problems with the latest builds on
> > > ia32.
> 
> > After doing some further testing, I have found that X seems to lock the
> > machine hard on our Lion boxes pretty much all the time.  Just starting X
> > will sometimes lock them up.  These boxes are all using the r128 driver.
> 
> > I am going to try the latest code from CVS tomorrow and see if there is
> > any improvment.  If not, what can I do to help track down where the
> > problem is coming from?
> 
> Well, on the assumption that it is a font renderer problem, you can try
> whittling down your font path until the problem stops happening.  Start by
> removing TrueType (or clone), then Type1, Speedo, etc.  If your running
> xfs, get rid of it first.

I went ahead and cut down my fonts to pretty much nothing.  The problem
still occurs.  I turned off acceleration on the Lion boxes, and that
allows our install program to run without X crashing.  With acceleration
turned on, the machine will hang if you use a scroll bar to move through a
large text list.

It was pointed out to me that /dev/mem needs to be opened with O_SYNC, so
that it will not be mapped write-cache.  Mapping it with write cache can
cause lockups.  I have a patch applied in os-support/lnx_video.c that
fixes this problem, but I still get lockups.  I was wondering if there
are any other places in the code where this could be happening?

Mike Madore
Software Engineer
TurboLinux, Inc.