On 26 Nov 2002 07:25:23 GMT, MLH wrote:
> 
> Since the releng snapshot of last Tuesday and I think every one
> since, I have been having trouble with xdm's child process:
...
> This may be related to the ATI card, but I'm not sure. I noticed
> that about the same time that this started up, the ATI 50-line font
> problem in the wscons screens was fixed but I may be off by a few
> snapshots.

I swapped components around between two systems, one which experienced
this problem and one which didn't. The problem followed whichever
system had the ATI Xpert2000 card in it. As I mentioned, there has
evidently been some change to the ati wscons driver for this card,
as it no longer experiences the old font problem when attempting
to use the vt220l.808 font and 80.50 screens. It appears that it
adversely affected the ati card's operation.

Any recommendations before I file a pr on this?

Thanks

...
> root     984  0.3 12.7 9928 33356 ??  Ss   11:27PM 0:01.65
>   /usr/X11R6/bin/X -dpi 100 -depth 16 vt05
>  -auth /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0
> 
> NetBSD 1.6K (GENERIC) #0: Mon Nov 25 02:46:58 UTC 2002
>      autobuild@tgm.daemon.org:/autobuild/HEAD/i386/OBJ/autobuild/
>      HEAD/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
> ...
> vga1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0: ATI Technologies product 0x5446
>      (rev. 0x00)
> 
> The sequence requires xdm to have been launched, a login session
> to have been completed and logged out of. After logout, sometimes
> xdm hangs, but every time, if one toggles to another wscons screen
> the xdisplay shifts up, the current xdm session (or login window)
> coredumps and xdm trys to restart it. Sometimes, the xdm child
> process hangs and a simple kill or rc.d/xdm restart cannot kill
> it. Sometimes the whole console input stream locks up and one is
> sol without another box around to log into and kill -9 the xdm
> session.
> 
> This problem only occurs with xdm. startx with twm or kde doesn't
> see this problem.  The logfiles show nothing unusual.
> 
> Any ideas?
>