Re: kill -9 <pid of X>

Olaf Titz (olaf@bigred.inka.de)
Thu, 13 Aug 1998 14:12:45 +0200


> Why is your X server in a tight loop with signals blocked?

Bacause of a bug in it? ;-)

> For example, it _never_ makes any sense to block SIGSEGV. For all I know,

XFree86 and svgalib apps _must_ block/catch SIGSEGV precisely because
that signal can occur at any time and exiting then leaves the hardware
in an undefined state. Just like with SIGTERM. The fact that SIGSEGV
are usually caused by a bug in the application doesn't change
anything. If the X server unexpectely dumps core without restoring
video mode you're hosed. Especially if it does that while writing a
register set, depending on the hardware the machine may need a power
cycle to ever get a beam out of the monitor again.

I've seen this various times with different graphics boards. Cirrus
and noname chipsets were the worst offenders.

olaf

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.altern.org/andrebalsa/doc/lkml-faq.html