On Wed, Feb 04, 1998 at 04:36:48PM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
> On Feb 4, Jukka Marin wrote
> > Yes, all processes which don't access the disk(s?) run OK and I can still
> > type on the console, but the system can't start login.
> 
> Hum, so I don't undertsand why the kernel didn't start ddb immedialtly
> after ctrl-alt-esc ...

I think my window manager had something to  do with it.. when I switched
to the console screen in pcvt, it worked immediately.

> No. In netbsd, there is an 'interrupt mask' which allows a part of code
> to block only some kind of interrupts (disks, network, tty, ...). So
> I/O interrupts may be blocked (and thus all disks access will block) without
> blocking interrupts from the serial port.
> (Yes, I should have say: some interuupts :)

I see.  Well, all my serial ports were functioning normally.  Ethernet was
alive and well.  As far as I can tell, only disk access fails (I haven't
tried to access the IDE disk while the problem exists - I'm not sure if I
can do that without causing an access to the SCSI disk (swap, system) at
the same time (shells do funny things sometimes).

Sigh, I guess I'll install 1.2 on the system again this Friday.. I can't
spend all my time trying to debug this and being afraid of a sudden freeze
and loss of work :-/

  -jm