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Comments, Suggestions & Questions / Re: OS/2 Single Input Queue
« on: 2008.03.20, 06:41:33 »
When firefox hangs majorly solid and requires the double CTRL-ALT-DEL it has nothing to do with the Input Queue.. it has to do with Innotek's font engine running out of system resources (basically just killing the whole graphics subsystem ). Obviously this is why IBM never was big on anyone hooking the graphics subsystem in this way. I've noticed that this happens more or less after long periods of uptime especially if I am reading and writing in alot of large forums (some coding forums I use, along with technical assistance sites I participate in). I'm not saying you thought that this had anything to do with the SIQ but I can say I am 99% sure of this, since when I removed the font engine it stopped occuring. Of course I reinstalled it because I would take a crash every month or two over unreadable small fonts on my 20" 1600x1200 display =) (I'm sure my large display size also increases the frequency of this problem).
My only remaining problem is with Firefox - usually during shutdown (and usually if gMail is open on a tab). Firefox hangs (someplace) during shutdown, and nothing responds on the machine (WPS, xWP, etc)... a few CTRL-ESC or ALT-ESC makes the SIQ workaround notice and take action (in 5-10 seconds - but I have the "Focus Change Sensitivity" set to 5 or less - not the default 20)... once the SIQ worker notices, it will prompt me with thread 192 (or whichever) has stopped responding, do you want to end it?" - at which time I get the "OK" and often no cancel choice. Selecting "OK" kills it, and the remnants of Firefox, (and usually frees a ton of memory - often more than is normally deallocated when Firefox shuts down normally) and all is well.
Occassionally, nothing seems to kill Firefox when it hangs... but for me, that is rare... in the instances where Firefox does hang, the kill/unkillable (requires reboot) ratio is probably 10:1.
On the rare instances Firefox is not killable, I have found that I *need* to hit C-A-D (twice1 because I have cadh installed - and it doesnt come up at all even tho the first CAD thinks it switched to it) to reboot and need to do it before I keep clicking on other things (either with the keyboard or mouse) or the system will not respond to the C-A-D keys and just beep when they are pressed, forcing a hard-power-off situation (or CTRL-ALT-NUMLOCK-NUMLOCK - which has always worked for me in every lockup situation - and is easier than reaching for the power switch...)
As an interesting side note, if you do get the "Process/Thread" (whatever) has stopped responding..." message and no cancel button - but for whatever reason want to hit cancel (ie: it is a resouce/GUI hungry process that you dont want to kill, or the SIQ worker has identified the wrong app, etc), then (assuming that window has focus) simply hit the escape key. Doing so seems to do the same thing as hitting the cancel button (when it is on the dialog box).
I am kinda curious why sometimes there is - and sometimes there isn't - a cancel button... but since the escape key seems to work the same, it's not really a big deal to me...
-Rob
Note 1: When trying to bypass CADH by double pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL, I find I need to hold CTRL-ALT, then press DEL, then release ALL of them and repeat to actually reboot. Oddly, holding CTRL-ALT, and hitting DEL twice (without letting go of CRTL and ALT) will not reboot any of my systems...

I guess running straight xfree issnt a bad choice, though I still only have an old version of gimp.