XOrg freeze that affects a lot of people

[Daniel Stone]

On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 12:14:59AM +0000, Charles Goodwin wrote:
> Again the issue I raise is being misconstrued / confused / diverted.
> The issue is not a specific bug with a specific driver.  The issue is
> that XOrg locks up when something unexpected occurs with the driver.  If
> it's locked up, it's still running.  If it's still running, it hasn't
> crashed.  If it's still running, it could surely be recovered.  Right?
> 
> Or am I way off base?  (Not implausible.)

Yes, you're way off base.

Xorg will call into the driver, and the driver will attempt to do stuff.

But the GPU's wedged, and not responding, so the driver will never
return (and there's really not much you can do to prevent this, except
a watchdog, ish).  So Xorg's just waiting on a function call to return.

But that function call will never return.

> If I'm not, then please don't misunderstand me.  I'm not condoning buggy
> graphics drivers.  Any such bugs should obviously be fixed.  However, to
> use a bad car metaphor, just because the engine dies doesn't mean the
> wheels should fall off.

Well, no, but you lose the ability to accelerate.  Your brakes, lights,
and other auxiliary systems will probably stop working too.
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