[gentoo-dev] System hangup w/ X taking 100% cpu

[Dan Armak <danarmak@gentoo.org>]

Hi all,

On my new r12 system I've had a hangup in X11. No apparent cause. The system 
stopped accepting any input and the screen didn't even complete a redraw. The 
mouse went on moving as it was in h/w, but clicks were no good. Magic sysrq 
wasn't responding either.

I logged in via ssh, and top showed X was taking 100% cpu. I tried killall X, 
no effect. I tried kill -9 <X pid>, the remote login hung up and i couldn't 
ssh to it again. I had to do a hard reboot.

Then I expirienced the same effect twice on an old rc5 system which underwent 
absolutely no updates or config changes for a few months now. Only this was 
standalone not on a net, so I couldn't login via ssh.

Both rc6 lockups were when running kmail, both rc5 lockups while running 
ksirc.

Trying to send this message, I had another lockup on the rc6 system, hope 
this reaches you.

I'm absolutely mystified. Ideas? Anyone seen this kind of thing before?

-- 

Dan Armak
Gentoo Linux Developer, Desktop Team
Matan, Israel