terminal freezes occationally

netmask netmask at enZotech.net
Mon Nov 1 07:09:41 UTC 2004


> Hmm.. sounds interesting...
>
> I see a Konsole process and a bash process.  When I strace the
> Konsole process I get a series of things... I don't know what I'm
> doing or what they mean... 'ioctl (3, FIONREAD, [Y])' appears a lot
> with Y=0 or 32... anyway, it's responsive.

That's pretty normal behavior..  The 32 is telling you how long that line is, 
if you did 'strace -s 200 -p $pid', it would be a lot more noisy and not 
truncate so small.


> OTOH, when I 'strace -p' the frozen bash process, I get:
>
> Process XXXX attached - interrupt to quit
> ioctl(0, TCSETSW

The ioctl function manipulates the underlying device parameters of special 
files. (from man)

It looks like it is apparently waiting for something to happen. If your shell 
was at prompt, waiting for more input.. typically you would see that read:

read(0,

and nothing more..

The TCSETSW portion, is "Allow the output buffer to drain, and set the current 
serial port settings."

> (at this point I try hitting return a few times, nothing)
> (I hit control-C)
> <unfinished ...>
> Process XXXX detached
>
> Any idea what this means?

The detached message just means that you've successfully let go of the process 
with strace.


--

I'm not really sure based on that, what the issue is. Perhaps someone else 
with more knowledge of the gui behaviors (I stick to console only really), and 
that knows the innards of ioctl() could shed some light on it.

-- 
netmask




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