*BSD News Article 16273


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!uniwa!cujo!cproto
From: cproto@cs.curtin.edu.au (Computer Protocol)
Subject: Re: wd stops on update
Message-ID: <cproto.737791950@marsh>
Sender: news@cujo.curtin.edu.au (News Manager)
Organization: Curtin University of Technology
References: <1tafgi$5s7@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 19 May 1993 06:12:30 GMT
Lines: 19

lessen@axion.bt.co.uk (Lee Essen) writes:

>This is a bit of a strange problem!  At completely random times, luckily with
>a large MTBF, my wd light comes on and stays on and no more disk access is
>permitted, the processes just block!

>It appears that the problem occurs when 'update' sync's the drive, when I
>reboot the filesystems are always clean (thank god!)

I have the same problem. It seems related to a high rate of context
switches e.g. running a large make in one xterm and doing some work
in another xterm often causes the system to lock up as you describe
it. I.e. processes not using the harddrive work fine (ping, X11, etc)
but anything going near the disk just locks up.

Regards - Tibor Sashegyi (cproto@cs.curtin.edu.au)

BTW I use 386bsd-0.1 with selected patches applied.