5.4-RC1 Freezing, but pingable (may be related to gvinum)

[Ash]

Peter Jeremy wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-Apr-09 14:51:41 -0500, Ash wrote:
> 
> This is consistent with the kernel continuing to run normally but being
> unable to schedule userland processes - usually due to a deadlock.
> 
> Do the caps-lock, num-lock, scroll-lock buttons on a local keyboard
> still toggle the relevant LEDs?
> 
> Assuming the LEDs toggle: Do you have "options DDB" and "options KDB"
> in your kernel?  If so, can you break into DDB?  (If not, I think
> you'll need to build a kernel with DDB).  Once the system has hung,
> you need to enter DDB and run 'ps'.  The output from that will give
> (hopefully) give an indication as to what is going wrong (and where to
> look next).  If you've build the kernel with debugging symbols and got
> a dump device enabled, "call doadump()" should also generate a
> crashdump which will be much easier to examine.
> 

Peter,

Thanks for the reply. I should have included this information in my 
initial e-mail:

I did not have a keyboard connected to the system before either crash. I 
did plug a keyboard in after the crash out of desperation. The keyboard 
LEDs were not responsive. However, it's a ps/2 keyboard, which does not 
get detected by this system unless it's plugged in before the machine POSTs.

I did not have DDB/KDB compiled in my kernel at the time, so I wasn't 
able to try to break into a debugger from the serial console. Shortly 
after the second crash I  recompiled the kernel with DDB/KDB. 
Essentially at this point I'm just waiting for another crash to see if I 
can get get into DDB from the serial console.

I was hoping that someone on the list may have run into a similar issue 
with 5_4_0 so that I could at least figure out how to reproduce the 
problem rather than simply waiting for the machine to hang again. 
Patience is not my greatest virtue :)

-Ash