[comp.sys.dec] LOCK field of pstat -s ?

pat@cs.cornell.edu (Pat Stephenson) (11/14/90)

Every so often, on my 12M DEcstation 3100, my epoch process (epoch is
a variation of emacs) will hang up for several minutes.  It's not
swapped out; if I run "pstat -s", the hung process has a non-zero
value for the LOCK field.  I have never seen a non-zero value for this
field under any other circumstances.  The man page for pstat doesn't
mention the field, however perusal of the source indicates that this
is the head of a chain of locks that seem to be associated with
symmetric multiprocessing.  Last I heard, the 3100 is not a
multiprocessor.

Can anybody give me any hints about what is going on?  Is this a known
bug?  Is it fixed in the latest version of ultrix?

Possibly relevent information:

epoch is invariably the largest process on the system when this
happens.  I am running:

ULTRIX V4.0 (Rev. 174) System #1: Thu Sep 27 17:03:50 EDT 1990
UWS V4.0 (Rev. 164)

Thanks in advance
Pat Stephenson