On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 01:46:08AM -0500, Dale wrote:
> Joshua Murphy wrote:
> >gdb is the GNU Debugger. As for the usability of strace in your case,
> >if you can see the last few calls before the lock-up occurs, it could
> >help narrow things down a bit. Also, if you SSH into the machine and
> >run firefox through strace via that (drawing to the machine's local
> >screen, not the SSH client's), you will have anything it can give in a
> >workable form, even after the system hangs. You might also test
> >whether it crashes while running Firefox via SSH and drawing to a
> >different machine, which (if it does) would allow you to sit on a real
> >terminal on the main system and see the kernel's output in the instant
> >of the crash or (if it doesn't) would narrow it down to X being a key
> >factor.
> >
>
> I'm like Peanut on the Jeff Dunham comedy skit. Take your hand and
> go over your head and say whoooosh. I better wait on a fix because
> I may break more than I learn. O_O
>
I second what Joshua says. It can help narrow down the cause.
One question: when Firefox causes the panic, does the Firefox window
appear, or does it not? If not, then it would cover up the terminal
emulator your are running `strace firefox` from, so you can still copy
down the few lines of output.
What Joshua is suggesting is to give your machine another way to show
its outputs. So take another box (a laptop or a desktop on your LAN)
and SSH into your problem box.
(1) Starting Firefox from the remote box.
i. On your problem box, open up console and issue `xhost +` (eh...
you probably want to be behind a firewall when you do this)
ii. ssh from your other box to the problem box
iii. issue now, in the ssh terminal `export DISPLAY=:0`
iv. issue `strace firefox`
This should let you start firefox on your problem box while having
the strace output sent to your other box. Maybe you'd be able to see
something there.
(2) Starting Firefox remotely. There are two versions of this.
(a) Run firefox on problem box.
i. ssh from your other box to the problem box, with the `-Y`
option set to allow X forwarding
ii. run `firefox` from the SSH console (this should run firefox
on the problem box and have it draw the display on your other box; if
this doesn't cause your problem box to lock up, it should tell us
something. What exactly I am not sure)
(b) Run firefox on other box.
i. ssh from your problem box to the other box, again with the
`-Y` option to allow X forwarding
ii. run `firefox` from the SSH console (if this doesn't crash,
then it is likely something funny with your local firefox; if it does
crash, then something real strange is going on)
Can you report on those experiments?
Good luck,
W
--
Willie W. Wong ww...@math.princeton.edu
Data aequatione quotcunque fluentes quantitae involvente fluxiones invenire
et vice versa ~~~ I. Newton
