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Path: sserve!manuel!munnari.oz.au!uunet!sun-barr!ames!data.nas.nasa.gov!taligent!apple!veritas!amdcad!BitBlocks.com!bvs From: bvs@BitBlocks.com (Bakul Shah) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: X386 far too busy? Message-ID: <1992Aug18.172513.9692@BitBlocks.com> Date: 18 Aug 92 17:25:13 GMT References: <1992Aug17.211128.7958@novatel.cuc.ab.ca> Organization: Bit Blocks, Inc. Lines: 26 hpeyerl@novatel.cuc.ab.ca (Herb Peyerl) writes: >I started the server about 18 hours ago and left it with only >two xterm's, an icon box, and an xclock running... There was >basically no activity all night. This morning I did a "ps -agx" >and noticed that X386 had racked up 1145:23.29 CPU (minutes?)... I suspect this is due to a bug in the com.c driver as I used to get the same symptom when I connected a serial mouse to com2. Here is a much simplified explanation: When there is nothing else to do, the X server waits for some input activity. It checks this by doing a select() on various input sources, mouse being one of them. But due to the above mentioned bug in the com.c driver, select() on /dev/com2 always returns true so the server is continuously checking for input, even though there is no new input. The fix is to upgrade to Chris Demetriou's latest com.c (from agate.berkeley.edu) or apply Christoph Robitschko's patches to the stock com.c (it was posted a while ago). Information about this and other bugs for which solutions exist should probably go in the FAQ. -- Bakul Shah <bvs@bitblocks.com>