Comment 0 for bug 295904

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Tormod Volden (tormodvolden) wrote : [x700] server looping and system hang

Binary package hint: xserver-xorg-video-ati

Quite often (in the order of once per hour) X freezes, and in a few seconds the whole system is unresponsive and does not react to alt-sysrq. The log has a bunch of these:

[mi] EQ overflowing. The server is probably stuck in an infinite loop.

I have been running Intrepid off a USB drive for quite some time with few problems, but after installing it to the internal laptop drive, these sudden hangs have appeared, so I wonder if there's a correlation, like heavy PCI bus traffic screwing up. It's pretty much always when using firefox, and for instance typing in the URL bar (which causes sqlite activity). My internal drive does not work faster than the USB drive though (probably because it runs 4200rpm and the USB one 5400*), but maybe the bus traffic has more intensive peaks when doing IDE than when going over USB? Or these observations are just coincidences...

*) The internal drive had some trouble with the new drivers in Hardy, and I had to add ata_piix to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules (bug #223235). This was solved, but maybe there's a performance regression.