| From: | Mark Olsen |
| Date: | 08 Jul 2000 at 04:35:13 |
| Subject: | Re: Multitask lock bug (was Re: Questions) |
Hello Oliver
On 16-Aug-00, you wrote:
>> The conclusiong is that it seems not to be a software problem. As the one
>> board works where there other fail, in the same software environment, it
>> must be something else. And it is /NOT/ cooling.
>
> I'm not so sure that it's not a software problem - it could be a bug in
> WarpOS, and it's just that the bug does not cause problems on all systems,
> but if the bug was fixed, WarpOS would then work on all systems. Just a
> theory :)
You're right, it could be, but in the light of current evidence, it seems like
it is a hw problem.
> I have a 240MHz 603e board, and I generally don't have any problems.
> However, under heavy WarpOS multitasking, WarpOS just seems to lock up.
> There are no crashes, hits, exceptions or anything - WarpOS just seems to
> get stuck and doesn't respond. If you try to run any PPC program after
> this has happened (such as stat), it just sits there and does nothing.
That's the one. Exact same symptoms, everything just stops. Kinda scary,
actully. If it is a software bug, it is most probably in the scheduler or the
hardware interface library thingie.
> One way which is almost guaranteed to reproduce this problem, is to
> create a script with about 100 "run multiview test.jpg" lines in it - i.e.
> tries to a display an image 100 times, with each process running in
> parallel. With my WarpJPEG and/or WarpPNG datatypes, this will usually
> result in WarpOS coming to a standstill, as above. I notice that the
> ak* datatypes appear to workaround this problem, by only allowing one
> decoder to run concurrently (whereas my datatypes may well have 100
> decoders/tasks running concurrently, in the this case).
Well, the easiest way to reproduce it here is to start Wipeout. It runs for
anything from 5 seconds to 30 minutes. Other ways could be playing an MP3,
encoding one and having the Distributed.net client running.
> Has Sam Jordan made any comments about this problem?
Yeah, he says that he is innocent (don't take this personally) ;)
Regards