[opensource-dev] Debugging Snowstorm under Linux x64 with GDB locks the whole X session

[Nicky D.]

Hello,

did anyone ever have the following problem? I start snowstorm directly
under gdb, run it. Then after a while (mostly after SL login) my
machine GUI locks up.

I cannot use any X programs anymore, if I run mplayer it will stop
playing music. Neither can I kill the X server or switch session. But
I can ssh into the
machine. There I see the snowstorm binary taking all CPU time. Once I
kill snowstorm and gdb via this ssh login everything will be good
again.

I get a hunch that this has to do with the threads snowstorm creates.
As the last thing I usually see in the gdb output is a line 'Thread
.... created'. Of course
this could be a coincidence.

This is a very annoying issue, as it makes debugging Snowstorm
(actually it seems to affect all V2 based viewers) nearly impossible.

The GDB version I use is 'GNU gdb (Gentoo 7.2 p1) 7.2'. Kernel is
2.6.36-gentoo-r3. Snowstorm is synced to the latest changes.

For snowstorm and kernel I already tried different versions. It did
not help at all. I even tried Phoenix-Firestorm, same result.

Has anyone ever seen something like this, or got a slight idea what I might try?
Can the threads in snowstorm be temporarily disabled to make sure they
are either causing or not causing this?

Cheers,
   Nicky