Re: user PPP and system hangs

[Rik Wade <rik_(_at_)_rikwade_(_dot_)_com>]

On Wed, 26 Feb 2003, Marcus Watts wrote:

> Well, it's either a hardware or a software issue.  Probably hardware,
> but one never knows.  If software, it's almost certainly a kernel
> (or bios) issue -- it should not be possible for userland pppd code
> to cause stray interrupts (at least, not without the collusion of
> system misconfiguration).

[edited]

> The "stray interrupt 7" is not guaranteed to be the cause of your
> system hang.  But it is an interesting symptom, and I think the leading
> candidate.

Firstly, many thanks to those who replied off-list. Some very useful tips, 
which are well summarised by Marcus's email to the list.

As a brief recap, the symptom is that when using userland PPP with my external
modem on cua00, the system will occasionally hang. This usually needs a hard
reboot to correct.

However, over the weekend I discovered that if I hard reset my external modem,
the system comes back to life. It is as if the entire system is hung waiting
for something to clear down on the serial line. Is this a known issue, or would
people suggest that it is bad config on my part?

--
rik