Subject: today's kernel exhibits frequent brief hangs
To: None <current-users@netbsd.org>
From: Jim Bernard <jbernard@mines.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 05/11/2002 18:31:42
Seen on i386, but I don't know if it's port specific.  Sources were updated
this morning (Sat May 11 13:13:23 UTC 2002).  I compiled and installed both
kernel and userland and found that it exhibits lots of brief (roughly half
second to several seconds) hangs during typing or mouse activity.  The
hangs occur both on the console and in xterms, both while doing local work
and while working over a connection to another box on the local net.  The
machine is a fast one and system load is negligible.  Symptoms are that
characters will stop echoing briefly or the mouse will stop moving briefly.
On connections to other boxes, there will occasionally be multisecond
delays---long enough to type a whole command, hit return, and still have
to wait a few seconds before any of the command shows up on the screen.

The hangs occur fairly frequently---typically about once per line or two
of text typed in, say, vi.

Keyboard and mouse are both plugged into ps/2 ports, fwiw.

Reverting the kernel (not userland) to one built April 12 makes the problem
go away, so it's clearly something that changed within the past month.

Is anyone else seeing this?  On other architectures, or only i386?

--Jim