[gentoo-user] X freezes & locks up, constantly

[gentoo-user] X freezes & locks up, constantly

[Phill MV]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1323 bytes --]

Every now and then, usually while doing something related to firefox (
mozilla-firefox-1.0.7-r2) but it's also happened when someone sent me a file
over MSN in gaim (gaim-1.5.0), my copy of xorg-x11-6.8.2-r4 will lock up and
refuse all interaction.

All windows stop responding; xmms keeps playing; keyboard locks up and the
mouse, although free to wiggle around won't cross from one screen to
another. Logging in from another machine over SSH, top reveals that X is
occupying 90-something% of the CPU; killing individual applications like
firefox or xmms doesn't do anything but killing X gives me back a working,
functional login screen.

This is, as you might imagine, amazingly annoying. For whatever reason,
it'll happen when I click specific links in Firefox (i.e. my professor's
labs & assignments link) or alt tab away or back into Firefox. I haven't
lost much work yet, thanks to my habit of using vim in screen but otherwise
it's frustrating to either boot up a 2nd (non linux) comp or hitting the
restart button.

It started when I accidentally updated a bunch of packages using ~x86
keywords but I've recompiled xorg and firefox back to their 'stable'
versions; sooner or later I'm going to try to recompile everything down to
their stable versions but in the meanwhile, any suggestions?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1354 bytes --]

[gentoo-user] X freezes & locks up, constantly

[Phill MV]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1323 bytes --]

Every now and then, usually while doing something related to firefox (
mozilla-firefox-1.0.7-r2) but it's also happened when someone sent me a file
over MSN in gaim (gaim-1.5.0), my copy of xorg-x11-6.8.2-r4 will lock up and
refuse all interaction.

All windows stop responding; xmms keeps playing; keyboard locks up and the
mouse, although free to wiggle around won't cross from one screen to
another. Logging in from another machine over SSH, top reveals that X is
occupying 90-something% of the CPU; killing individual applications like
firefox or xmms doesn't do anything but killing X gives me back a working,
functional login screen.

This is, as you might imagine, amazingly annoying. For whatever reason,
it'll happen when I click specific links in Firefox (i.e. my professor's
labs & assignments link) or alt tab away or back into Firefox. I haven't
lost much work yet, thanks to my habit of using vim in screen but otherwise
it's frustrating to either boot up a 2nd (non linux) comp or hitting the
restart button.

It started when I accidentally updated a bunch of packages using ~x86
keywords but I've recompiled xorg and firefox back to their 'stable'
versions; sooner or later I'm going to try to recompile everything down to
their stable versions but in the meanwhile, any suggestions?

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1387 bytes --]

Re: [gentoo-user] X freezes & locks up, constantly

[Holly Bostick]

Phill MV schreef:
> Every now and then, usually while doing something related to firefox
> ( mozilla-firefox-1.0.7-r2) but it's also happened when someone sent
> me a file over MSN in gaim (gaim-1.5.0), my copy of xorg-x11-6.8.2-r4
> will lock up and refuse all interaction.
> 
> All windows stop responding; xmms keeps playing; keyboard locks up
> and the mouse, although free to wiggle around won't cross from one
> screen to another. Logging in from another machine over SSH, top
> reveals that X is occupying 90-something% of the CPU; killing
> individual applications like firefox or xmms doesn't do anything but
> killing X gives me back a working, functional login screen.
> 
> This is, as you might imagine, amazingly annoying. For whatever
> reason, it'll happen when I click specific links in Firefox (i.e. my
> professor's labs & assignments link) <snip>

Before going further, let me say that I agree that X is becoming a real
annoyance. I'm at this very moment upgrading to the unstable version
(6.8.2-r6, not the masked pre-7.0 versions; I'm not that desperate :-) )
to see if it helps.

That said, this would seem to be an interaction between 'problems with
X' and 'problems with Firefox' (we've had discussions of the increasing
memory usage of Firefox lately-- it may well be that both these sets of
issues are manageable on their own, but together, Firefox becomes the
straw that breaks the back of X.

So try using another web browser for a while. I myself like Galeon for
my alternate browser, but there's Epiphany, Dillo, Konqueror (of
course), kazehakase, w3m, amaya, skipstone, and of course the text-based
browsers such as links, lynx and so on. I would avoid Mozilla, because
it's about the only thing that could possibly be yet more bloated than
Firefox is becoming.

In any case, see if the problem persists when using another browser; if
it doesn't, then at least you can do your work, if it does, perhaps
we'll get more information as to what is going wrong.

Hope this helps,
Holly
-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-user] X freezes & locks up, constantly

[Phill MV]

That's a pretty defeatist way of looking at it :P.
FIrefox seems to work just fine on every other X running desktop,
including a fellow Gentoo'er friend of mind;
Not to mention that simply stop using the application cos X has a bug
is, well, far out.

I'll go ahead with the mass recompile, I guess.
(PS. Opera 8.5 is waaay laggy for some reason and I like my extensions)


On 08/11/05, Holly Bostick <motub@planet.nl> wrote:
> Phill MV schreef:
> > Every now and then, usually while doing something related to firefox
> > ( mozilla-firefox-1.0.7-r2) but it's also happened when someone sent
> > me a file over MSN in gaim (gaim-1.5.0), my copy of xorg-x11-6.8.2-r4
> > will lock up and refuse all interaction.
> >
> > All windows stop responding; xmms keeps playing; keyboard locks up
> > and the mouse, although free to wiggle around won't cross from one
> > screen to another. Logging in from another machine over SSH, top
> > reveals that X is occupying 90-something% of the CPU; killing
> > individual applications like firefox or xmms doesn't do anything but
> > killing X gives me back a working, functional login screen.
> >
> > This is, as you might imagine, amazingly annoying. For whatever
> > reason, it'll happen when I click specific links in Firefox (i.e. my
> > professor's labs & assignments link) <snip>
>
> Before going further, let me say that I agree that X is becoming a real
> annoyance. I'm at this very moment upgrading to the unstable version
> (6.8.2-r6, not the masked pre-7.0 versions; I'm not that desperate :-) )
> to see if it helps.
>
> That said, this would seem to be an interaction between 'problems with
> X' and 'problems with Firefox' (we've had discussions of the increasing
> memory usage of Firefox lately-- it may well be that both these sets of
> issues are manageable on their own, but together, Firefox becomes the
> straw that breaks the back of X.
>
> So try using another web browser for a while. I myself like Galeon for
> my alternate browser, but there's Epiphany, Dillo, Konqueror (of
> course), kazehakase, w3m, amaya, skipstone, and of course the text-based
> browsers such as links, lynx and so on. I would avoid Mozilla, because
> it's about the only thing that could possibly be yet more bloated than
> Firefox is becoming.
>
> In any case, see if the problem persists when using another browser; if
> it doesn't, then at least you can do your work, if it does, perhaps
> we'll get more information as to what is going wrong.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Holly
> --
> gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
>
>

-- 
gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list