Joey Hess wrote: > So: what if there is a bug in the optimizer, which generates incorrect > optimised code for either the X server, or X library, but only > sometimes. Some kind of math error might be involved. Once the badly > optimised code pops up, it would stay in the cache and this would > explain why even restarting X does not solve the problem. Presumably > certian workloads would knock it out of the cache, which would explain > the problem sometimes fixing itself. And rebooting the system (or > software suspending it) would likewise clear the cache.
Something else that backs up this idea is that one impression I have gotten is that if I stop trying to open X apps that are going to fail for a while, but keep doing stuff, X seems to recover quicker. Which would be consistent with the badly optimised hunk of code being thrown out of the cache because it was not being used. I'm going to switch my laptop over to suspend to disk instead of suspend to ram, I suspect that would let me recover from the problem posthaste by suspending and resuming the machine. -- see shy jo