f11 X "hang"

[David L]

On Mon, Jun 1, 2009 at 8:35 AM, Adam Jackson  wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-05-31 at 21:38 -0700, David L wrote:
>> I'm having a strange problem where X is kinda sorta
>> hanging... I can move the mouse and the keyboard
>> is responsive to changes in caps lock, but I can't
>> switch workspaces or select a new window or do
>> anything useful from my X session.  The way I'm
>> getting into this state is to do this:
>>
>> strace ekiga
<snip>
> strace'ing X apps is a great way to livelock yourself.  You really don't
> want to do this.
<snip>
Thanks for the detailed response.  Maybe the strace man page
should say "Don't trace X apps".  I'm sure I wouldn't have read it,
but then you could have said RTFM.  ;)

Would it be possible for strace to detect that you're tracing
an X app based on the system calls you're making?  I guess
that would add more overhead to something that already slows down
the traced app.  If the app was dynamically linked, maybe it could
just check for libX* library dependencies?

What about the other way around... can an app check
if it's being straced before doing a server grab?  Do server grabs
happen so frequently that the overhead of checking for stracing
would be unacceptable?

Just some random thoughts... I guess in the end, a man page
tweak would be the simplest thing to do.


Cheers,

                 David