Re: Xwin crashing

[Harold L Hunt II <huntharo at msu dot edu>]

James,

James D Below wrote:

> Hi Everyone,
>
> I'm having a problem where Xwin hangs/locks up while actively using 
> it(vi,ssh,etc).  When this occurs, the keyboard and mouse are 
> unresponsive when Cygwin/X is the active desktop. I can Alt-Tab to get 
> back to a windows desktop.  I have also tried different window managers 
> (twm mwm windowmaker, even kde) without any success in tracking down the 
> problem.
>
> I have updated my cygwin installation to the current version include 
> xfree8-xserv version 4.3.0-52.
>
> I'm at a loss to what may be causing this so, I've attached my XWin.log 
> and the last 100 lines of an "strace -o strace.log xinit 
> /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc -- usr/X11R6/bin/X" for review. I included a ps 
> -ea at the bottom of strace.log.
>
> I can send in a cygcheck if necessary.
>
> Anyone have any ideas on what may be the culprit or how to troubleshoot 
> this further?

It looks like you are having a problem with DirectDraw losing the 
surface and not being able to regain it (perhaps).

Are you running any games/movie players/music players with visual 
effects/anything that might be doing fancy graphics at the same time? 
If so, see if you can correlate the hang to when you launch such an 
application.

In the meantime, try passing "-engine 1" to the X Server, which should 
force it to use GDI instead of DirectDraw... it will be useful to know 
if this makes the hanging go away.

Are you aware of the "multi-window mode" that runs an internal window 
manager that draws each X application in its own window?  Some people 
have a good reason for using single window mode, but some people still 
don't know about multi-window mode, so I have to check.

Harold