Let me apologize in advance for sending this to the wrong places
rather that submitting a bug report. I don't know where the bug is,
and I an double-posting because I am not sure this isn't SPARC specific.
Very Short description:
-----------------------
1. If you give mozilla complete garbage to display,
sometimes it fills the screen with garbage, and sometimes
it exits silently. This is with the SAME garbage ---
http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/experimental/sparc/livecd/sparc64/
gentoo-sparc64-1.4_rc4-08Sep2003-cd1.iso
will do.
2. Same with mozilla-firebird, except it provides "Illegal Instruction"
as a clue (to buffer overrun?)
Longer description:
-------------------
As above, plus the following:
3. Systems involved are sparc U2(lacewing), U60(antaresia) with
identical kernels 2.4.21-r1(SMP)
4. mozilla is " [ I] net-www/mozilla-1.4-r3 (0)" (current for sparc)
5. mozilla-firebird is "[M~I] net-www/mozilla-firebird-0.7 (0)"
otherwise running pretty much flawlessly.
6. xfree on U2 is "[ I] x11-base/xfree-4.3.0-r3 (0)" (current for
sparc)
7. U60 has two root partitions. One is an exact clone of the other (as
of 13 November) except for xfree-4.3.0-r2. Behavior is
non-deterministic with either partition mounted on "/".
8. All xfree versions have xfree patched (as per comments #32, 33 to
bug 19776 because for me xfree is otherwise unusable.)
9. Except for today's invitation to update glibc, both systems are
completely current and rock solid.
Observations:
-------------
10. On a third system (U2-SMP, terciopelo), problem is less likely to
occur (maybe
never, but I haven't sat at it displaying garbage over and over).
It started out as a clone of the original U2, and is current,
but I cannot guarantee that its software configuration is
identical to the original U2 (lacewing).
11. The U2(lacewing) and U60(antaresia) are not identically configured
(hardware or software packages.)
12. Empirically, -root- has a slightly better chance of success than
I as me do.
13. Empirically, it seems to help if you try to list a '.bz2' file
first; both mozillas filter that out as something they can't deal
with and ask for help, but then seem more likely to display
garbage for the '.iso' file.
14. The "Illegal instruction" makes this look like a buffer overrun or
otherwise an attempt to execute data or a program which isn't
loaded yet.
15. Note that mozilla looks to be pretty agressively threaded.
16. For me, gdb has problems with mozilla.
17. Oh, before you ask: The mozilla ebuilds downgrade the CFLAGS for
mozilla to "-mcpu=v8 -mtune=ultrasparc" so there should be no
sparc64 issues here nor similar "-cpu=v9" questions.
18. No, I don't use any font server.
19. I doubt that this is related to xfree-4.3.0-r3's cryptic "If
you have font problems with openoffice, regenerate XF86Config"
advice, because:
a. xfree-4.3.0-r2 seems to exhibit the same behavior;
b. And I couldn't act on that advice anyway, because it doesn't
give a clue how one should change XF86Config.
----------------
By no means do I reject the possibility that this is a problem of my
own creation. But if it is such a thing, I do not see how it does not
stem from poor interaction among otherwise benign packages. (I say this
so that I am more likely to see what I've screwed up immediately after
sending this, so that I'll have to come back and admit my mistakes :-) )
I suppose I am asking for suggestions on how you (collectively) would
like me to proceed. I am not really in a position to track down what look
to me like (possibly sparc only) timing problems between mozilla and ??
which cause mozilla silently to give up.
Sorry for going on so long,
Regards,
Ferris
--
Ferris McCormick (P44646, MI) <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Phone: (703) 392-0303
Fax: (703) 392-0401
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list
