[ltp] Re: mystery X lossage

[Jamie Zawinski]

I wrote:
> 
> It seems it's not as simple as I first thought -- the X server listens
> to the keyboard for a little while, *then* wedges.  (But only the
> first time it's started after a boot.)  If I log in right away, after
> X comes up, I'm able to -- it only loses the keyboard a minute or two
> later.  The X server is otherwise functional -- repainting windows,
> etc.

It looks like the delay before things go south is just about exactly 1
minute after X starts.  I wonder what's waking up and breaking things.

More trivia: once the keyboard has gotten stuck, "chvt" doesn't work.
If I do "chvt 1" (or any other number) the screen flickers black once,
then shows the xdm screen again -- and the "chvt" process does not exit
(gdb shows it being stuck in ioctl.)

Rob Mayoff wrote:
> 
> When you log in remotely, run "kbd_mode".  It should say raw
> (scancode) mode.  If it doesn't, that would be the problem.

It's in scancode mode, before and after.

Bill Mair wrote:
> 
> Looks like you are using runlevel 5 ("If I log in right away, after X
> comes up"), try booting with runlevel 3 and then starting X. If this
> works then we may have more to go on.

xdm starts by "/usr/X11R6/bin/xdm &" in /etc/rc.d/rc.local.
If I comment that out, reboot, log in as root, and launch xdm
from that shell, it works fine.  (Needless to say, needing to 
log in on the console before X starts is not something I find
terribly acceptable, so this isn't a fix...)

> I also read in your original posting that you are using 3.3.2, would
> it be much of a problem for you to upgrade to 3.3.3.x ? It may solve
> your problems.

What makes you think that changing my kernel will fix this problem?

In my experience, any time I get sucked into into the cascading-upgrade
dance, it takes me a week, and I end up worse off than before.  Unless
you have some reason to believe that doing this will fix this problem,
I'm inclined to stay far, far away from knee-jerk "upgrades".

I just can't imagine why this started happening.  I keep careful logs of
everything I change about this machine, and I hadn't touched a single
file outside of my home directory for at least a month before this
problem appeared.

-- 
Jamie Zawinski             jwz@jwz.org             http://www.jwz.org/