freebsd stable - May 2004 - Fwd: FreeBSD 4.10-PRERELEASE: Problems with nanosleep?

From: Clemens Hintze <cle@qiao.localnet>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: FreeBSD 4.10-PRERELEASE: Problems with nanosleep?

Hello,

sorry, if I did violate some ettiquette here, but I had following
article posted to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc and Kris Kennaway told 
me, I should ASAP post this to your mailing list.

So here it goes:

================== ORIGINAL ARTICLE FOLLOWED =====================
Hello,

sorry if this was already answered anywhere, but I couldn't find any
description similar to my problem.

Since some time (after FreeBSD-4.9, perhaps) I got a serious problem
with my FreeBSD box. Despite the fact, that my USB HD as well as my
USB memory card reader will trigger my box to page fault and reboot
(something that did not happen in FreeBSD 5-1, formerly) I got a new
problem suddenly (after some upgrade via cvsup to RELENG_4 some time
before).

The symptoms seem to be, that process will suddenly hang as not awake
again from some sleep. For example, my larsclock does not count
seconds anymore, my screensaver (xlock) will not move anymore or my
ppp will not dial out on request (neither automatically nor manually).

The screensaver will wake up again if I press any key on the keyboard.
My larsclock will tick again, if I attach the process with the gdb,
(finding it in nanosleep any time I try this), continue the execution,
interrupt it via Ctrl-C, detach the process and quit the gdb.

Only the ppp will not come back. I have to kill the process, have to
remove its socket in /var/run sometimes and restart it.

All those processes seem to work properly as long as I sit in front of
my box and do something. If I came back after some time, I will find
all the scenarios described above.

As this seem to happen after some idle time (as I am not there), I
would assume some problem with energy saver, if I had changed anything
at this configuration in the last few month. But I am not aware of
using energy saving anywhere, nor did I change anything in this area
-- indeed I did not change anything in the system besides cvsup
/usr/src and rebuilding/installing world and kernel sometimes.

All went well (despite the USB problem) for month until I decided to
cvsup, buildworld buildkernel upgrading to 4.9. Anytime after a
functional 4.9 some cvsup changes had those strange behavior (perhaps
it was already some 4.10 then).

Does anybody has /any/ idea what the cause of all this mess could be?

Any help is appreciated.


Best regards,
Clemens.


PS: Sorry for my confusing explanation an buggy english!

-- 
Clemens Hintze  mailto: c.hintze (at) gmx.net