Finally. Turns out I had done something really dumb; the problem had nothing to do with screen blanking or X.
Because I send and receive mail via another server, I had disabled sending mail in rc.conf. don't do dat. I wasn't getting the system messages targeted at root, and eventually /var/spool/mqueue filled up. With /var full, things don't work too well. I didn't know /var was full because I wasn't getting the messages... bad administrator. bad! bad! don't do dat ever again! Gary On 08/21/12 21:28, Gary Aitken wrote: > Aargh... > So my 9.0 RELEASE system no longer totally hangs when sitting idle... > it seems to run quite a bit longer, waking up from screen blanking in general > even after long (overnight) periods of sitting idle. However, not always. > > X (screen was allowed to blank after 10 min, I'm testing w/ that off now.) > blanked the screen. > I come back after a few hrs of the system doing nothing (leaving a lot of > stuff open, esp in firefox) and the screen is blank (expected) but doesn't > wake up. > > I can ping from another machine, but not rlogin (no response). > That seems weird. > /var/log/messages shows no activity around attempted rlogin time > Previously, before I turned off memory hole mapping in bios, > it would go totally dead, but now it's clearly breathing. > Power switch doesn't do a soft reboot, > but I haven't tested it independently to see if it works at all. > Will do that on next reboot. > > Question: > > If one does <ctl><alt>D to get out of X, > how does that affect things? > i.e. Since there is no active X display, > what happens if a process tries to repaint? > Does this effectively take display hardware out of the picture > for troubleshooting? > > Output from "last": > > garya pts/5 nightmare Tue Aug 21 18:26 - 18:26 (00:00) > garya pts/3 :0 Tue Aug 21 17:12 still logged in > garya pts/2 :0 Tue Aug 21 17:12 still logged in > garya pts/0 :0 Tue Aug 21 17:12 still logged in > garya pts/1 :0 Tue Aug 21 17:12 still logged in > garya pts/4 :0 Tue Aug 21 17:12 still logged in > garya ttyv0 Tue Aug 21 17:08 still logged in > boot time Tue Aug 21 17:06 > garya pts/3 :0 Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22) > garya pts/4 :0 Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22) > garya pts/2 :0 Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22) > garya pts/1 :0 Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22) > garya pts/0 :0 Sun Aug 19 15:44 - crash (2+01:22) > root ttyv4 Sun Aug 19 15:42 - crash (2+01:23) > garya pts/4 :0 Sun Aug 19 15:15 - 15:41 (00:25) > > I discovered the system was hung and rebooted around Aug 21 17:06. > Why is no crash recorded on Aug 21? > The system was working (behaving normally) until at least ~ Aug 21 15:00 > Since I could ping it around Aug 21 17:00, > but then did a forced power down in order to reboot, > shouldn't that show as a crash or something? > Why is there no boot recorded soon after Aug 19 15:44? (I did reboot) > Why does the first entry for garya after boot show still logged in? > Is this because the records are based on the utx.log file, > and the system crashed, so it looks like I'm still logged in? > > /var/log/cron shows: > > Aug 21 13:11:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10699]: (operator) CMD > (/usr/libexec/save-entropy) > Aug 21 13:15:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10717]: (root) CMD > (/usr/libexec/atrun) > Aug 21 13:20:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10719]: (root) CMD > (/usr/libexec/atrun) > Aug 21 13:22:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10721]: (operator) CMD > (/usr/libexec/save-entropy) > Aug 21 13:25:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[10733]: (root) CMD > (/usr/libexec/atrun) > Aug 21 17:10:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[1878]: (root) CMD > (/usr/libexec/atrun) > Aug 21 17:11:00 breakaway /usr/sbin/cron[1882]: (operator) CMD > (/usr/libexec/save-entropy) > > So it appears the system went south around Aug 21 13:25 > > Anything else I should look at for hints? > Any suggestions for how to narrow this down further other than: > disabling X screen blanking > <ctl><alt>D to get out of X prior to leaving machine idle > > Thanks for any suggestions, > > gary > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org" > > _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org"
