Re: 2.6.21-rc5 possible regression: KDE processes die silently (was: 2.6.21-rc3-mm2: KDE processes die while system is idle)

[ebiederm@xmission.com (Eric W. Biederman)]

Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de> writes:

> On Sun, Apr 01, 2007 at 05:21:06PM +0200, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
>> I'm sorry to say this has now happened with kernel 2.6.21-rc5, too.
>> I started a kernel compilation in the evening and came back in the
>> morning to find all KDE decorations gone. All processes normally
>> running for a KDE session and labelled "[kinit]" in ps were gone
>> but everything else was running fine, and the system was still
>> usable via ssh. /var/log/kdm.log and /var/log/Xorg.0.log contained
>> nothing remotely suspicious. /var/log/messages had two lines I
>> never saw before:
>> 
>> Mar 31 02:27:36 gx110 kernel: [153577.891443] ReiserFS: hda3: warning:
> vs-8115: get_num_ver: not directory or indirect item
>> Mar 31 02:27:36 gx110 kernel: [153577.891559] ReiserFS: hda3: warning:
> vs-8115: get_num_ver: not directory or indirect item
>
> Reiserfs people Cc'ed for this.
>
>> But those didn't appear on previous occurrences of the "dying KDE"
>> problem so I guess they are not related.
>> 
>> This is SUSE LINUX 10.0 (i586) running on a Dell OptiPlex GX110
>> (Intel P3, 933 MHz, i810 chipset, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB ATA disk)
>> % uname -a
>> Linux gx110 2.6.21-rc5-noinitrd #1 PREEMPT Sat Mar 31 02:15:19 CEST 2007 i686
> i686 i386 GNU/Linux
>> % cat /proc/cmdline
>> root=/dev/hda3 selinux=0 x11i=vesa video=intelfb:mode=1280x1024-32@70
> nmi_watchdog=2 lapic 5
>> Kernel configuration mostly-modular, based on standard SuSE kernel's
>> /proc/config.gz, just compiling into the kernel everything I need to
>> boot without an initrd and omitting some parts I'm not interested in.
>> (.config attached.) What else might be relevant?
>> 
>> Again, this is a Heisenbug, ie. it's not reproducible and invariably
>> happens when I'm away from the machine. (Probably Murphy at work.)
>> It's pretty rare: I have seen it four times on 2.6.21-rc3-mm2 and
>> once on 2.6.21-rc5, on a machine which spends about equal amounts
>> of time running the latest stable, rc, and mm kernels. OTOH, so far
>> it hasn't ever happened with any 2.6.20 or earlier kernel. Nor have
>> I seen it with 2.6.21-rc[1-4] or 2.6.21-rc4-mm* - but for the -rc4
>> and -rc4-mm releases that's not conclusive as those have only been
>> running for a very short time.
>
> We also have another report of crashes under KDE:
>
> Subject    : crashes in KDE
> References : http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8157
> Submitter  : Oliver Pinter <oliver.pntr@gmail.com>
> Status     : unknown
>
> We also have one bug kwin ran into that got fixed after -rc5:
>
> Subject    : kwin dies silently
> References : http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/28/112
> Submitter  : Sid Boyce <g3vbv@blueyonder.co.uk>
>              Boris Mogwitz <boris@macbeth.rhoen.de>
>              Michael Wu <aluminum.tape@gmail.com>
> Caused-By  : Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
>              commit 0475ac0845f9295bc5f69af45f58dff2c104c8d1
> Fixed-By   : Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
> Commit     : 14e9d5730adfca26452b3a2838a80af6950556f5
> Status     : fixed in -rc6
>
> These might or might not be related issues.

The description above sounds like the kwin bug, except for the trigger.
(i.e. The set of processes that die are all largely part of the same
 process group, and they sound like the same set of processes).
So I'm guessing it is the same issue.

The crashes in KDE bug may also be the same problem there isn't enough
information to make a good guess.  So until -rc6 we get a test
report from -rc6 after or whatever Linus latest tree is I'm not inclined
to dig farther.

Eric