>Hi,
>
>> My theory is that the somewhat broken serial on the machine was blocking
>> syslog because syslogd was trying to write to /dev/console.  Everything that
>> generated a console message (like su) would eventually hang because of
>> this blockage.
>>
>> Has anyone else seen anything like this?  Any opinions?
>
>Yes, I've seen this on my VAX, too. At least once I've had a problem that,
>while I'm not certain it is exactly this, could be explained by
>/dev/console becoming blocked. I've had problems immediately after
>plugging / unplugging the serial cable, rebooting the machine providing
>the serial connection, and when I've accidentally allowed minicom to reset
>the port.

Question about syslog/serial/kernel.....

I would think that we would do our best to ensure that a blocked/broken
console would never block "necessary" operations.  If the blocked serial
theory is correct, this eventually would have made my system quite unusable,
and or crashed it.  Doesn't syslogd have
some sort of mechanism to time out when one of its output targets
becomes blocked?  Ideally, all the writes should be "fire and forget"
writes.  If they work, great.  If not, the data is lost.  Tough.

??

-dgl-