Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!lll-lcc!styx!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!decvax!mcnc!unc!rentsch From: rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk Subject: Catatonia cure Message-ID: <453@unc.unc.UUCP> Date: Sun, 21-Dec-86 04:06:01 EST Article-I.D.: unc.453 Posted: Sun Dec 21 04:06:01 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 21-Dec-86 20:36:39 EST Reply-To: rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill Lines: 47 This is my promised follow-up posting on 'curing' catatonia by an adb patch to the unix kernel. First, the news. The cure works great! The test was done on several suns, and done without modifying the configuration *except* to install the patch. The results: (1) longer runs of a large application, and greater user confidence in the solidity of the interpreter (2) hours of running on one particularly problematic sun, with no crashes (not conclusive, but much better than past performance) (3) when moving the mouse continuously during a save, things work fine. This is significant because without the patch installed, this *repeatably* causes problems (unrepeatably it causes crashes, but even when there is no crash there are problems with queue overflow). After the patch is installed, this repeatable symptom disappears. Minor side note: although Smalltalk was causing crashes, some symptoms I reported after a crash may have been caused by a bad CPU board. You can decide for yourself what this means, I just wanted to set the record straight. This really is just a side issue, since (1) Smalltalk definitely was causing crashes, and (2) those crashes have stopped happening since we installed the patch that fixes the sun window system bug. And, for those intrepid folks who would like to try kernel stomping for themselves, here is the patch: There was a 3.0 kernel deadlock bug that may be the cause. The fix was to set the kernel variable ws_set_favor to zero. % adb -w /vmunix ws_set_favor?W 0 ^D % /etc/reboot. That's all. cheers, txr