debugging lockups

[Don Lewis]

On  4 Mar, vladimir at math.uic.edu wrote:
> Following up on my previous post  from a couple of days ago with the
> same subject (unfortunately I don't have my original email, so this
> will probably start  a new thread).   A -CURRENT system (built on Mar 3,
> 2004) frequently locks up when typing "ps" or "w", in addition to when
> killing memory-intensive processes.   The system locks up hard, and I
> cannot break into the debugger from the console, although the necessary
> options are compiled into the kernel.

This is a known problem.  See the thread "sysctl spinning (was: Re: ps
Causes Hard Hang)".