On Wednesday 18 April 2007 22:44, Karel Kulhavy wrote: > Looks like X Windows have some race condition or maybe it's in the > kernel? > > I've been running spamassassin learning which loaded the system. Then > I started X Windows System with "startx". During normal startup, a > screen of garbage flashes and is replaced with black screen and then > with X background. > > But this time, the garbage stayed. The learning was still running as > I could see by disk activity. I let it overnight and in the morning, > there was still garbage. > > I know Linux has a problem like this - the console switching there is > designed in a flawed way, the simple signal mechanism contains a race > condition, which triggers typically during overloaded system. But > that OpenBSD would have a similar problem? Or is it a bug of the X > Window System?
It's late here and I don't quite understand your problem description very well. Maybe I'm too tired. Anyhow, are you sure X is configured correctly? (i.e. does X run correctly when you're not loading the system with a spamassassin learning session?) If you can get to your /var/log/Xorg.0.log file, it might have some clues but your description seems like you might have misconfigured X (xorg.conf). When you get the garbage, if you do a CTRL-ALT-F5 to switch to/from the virtual console assigned to X, what happens? Assuming you used the first virtual console to log in and start X, when you get the garbage what happens if you do a CTRL-ALT-F2 to get the second (text) virtual console? kind regards, jcr
