Here is a problem that cropped up when I started installing pfil
(for ipf 4.x) on some older machines. I wonder if anyone else has
seen that.
Summary: on three SunBlades 100/150 with fresh Solaris 9 9/04, no
mouse, installing recent pfil causes a keyboard hang right after the
first multi-user reboot, a few seconds after the system notices it
can't start X (because there is no mouse).
<aside> In my humble opinion, way too much of Solaris these days
_assumes_ that there is a mouse, and a GUI. That's not a very good
assumption for a server/workstation company to make. </aside>
Some details:
- fresh Solaris 9 9/2004, CLI installer (again, no mouse, network
unplugged); I've done this many, many times in the past with no
problems
- recommended/security cluster 7/24/2007 [it doesn't seem to matter,
I tried with a cluster from 3/2007 and without any patches at all]
- pfil-2.1.13 compiled on the exact same platform/OS with SunStudio
11 (plus recent patches applied) and with gcc 4.2.1; I also tried
pfil-2.1.11, no difference
- pfil must be active - just installing it (e.g. with no ipf.conf, so
it doesn't load) doesn't cause the hang
- ipf is irrelevant, it doesn't have to be installed for the hang to
occur; ipf 3.4.31 (without pfil, obviously) works fine on the same
machines
- keyboard becomes unresponsive about 15-20 seconds after the X server
tries to start and fails (no mouse)
- stop-a works, so it isn't a total hard hang
- the hang doesn't happen if a mouse is attached; then the dtlogin
screen comes up, and seems to function OK
Booting in single mode, pkgrm pfil, and rebooting restores the box to
working condition, so pfil clearly somehow triggers it. I repeated all
this about 20 times in recent days and it's entirely reproducible.
After playing around with /etc/rc.X I found that disabling S85power
prevents this from happening, so it looks like some bad karma between
power management, pfil - and certain frame buffers.
Of all the Suns I tried, the hang only occurs on Sunblades 100/150,
and (almost certainly, although I can't test it properly right now)
only on those with plain-vanilla onboard m64. Sunblades 1500/2500,
two V240s with no video, and two Solaris 10 Ultra 25s all work fine
with pfil 2.1.13 and ipf 4.1.24.
A Sunblade 150 with an Elite3D-Lite is working OK also, but I can't
vouch that it was installed in exactly the same way (kind-of a long
story as to "why"; still, I'm almost sure I'd have seen the hang on
that one if it were affected).
Google found another recent report ("ipfilter blocks USB keyboard")
which looks similar to my problem, but in that case the hang happens
after a random while; in my case it was always right after boot. So
I'm not sure if that is related.
I'm not terribly handy with mdb and friends, so I'd need guidance if
more information is needed to pinpoint this. Thanks.
--
Eric Behr | NIU Mathematical Sciences | (815) 753 6727
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.math.niu.edu/~behr/ | fax: 753 1112
