rentsch@unc.UUCP (Tim Rentsch) (10/30/86)
We have "experienced" (boy oh boy have we ever experienced) a
problem when running Xerox PS smalltalk on our sun-3's. The symptom
is that the sun-3 completely croaks. We are talking totally
catatonic, such as: no response to keyboard, no rlogins, in one
case even abort + reboot failed!
As near as I can tell this happens because the Smalltalk files
(image, interpreter, sources, etc.) are located on a sun-2 server
rather than directly on the sun-3. I have heard second hand that
the problem is a race condition in the sun-3 unix kernel (we have
observed the problem in 3.2 if anyone cares).
My questions are:
(1) Anyone else observed the same symptom? (similar symptom under
different circumstances also appreciated here.)
(2) Anyone know exactly what causes the problem and when?
(3) Since the problem seems to be in the unix kernel, any ideas
on how to get sun to respond to fix it?
If people from sun are listening out there, be warned: this problem
is important and i mean to have it solved. So if you know about the
problem, you would be well advised to start working on a fix.
As usual, help from netland is appreciated, and if i actually find
out anything i will report back to the net.
cheers,
txr