Re: Well, That Was Special

[Donald Henson <wepin wepin com>]

On Wed, 2003-12-10 at 19:57, Stuart D. Gathman wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2003, Donald Henson wrote:
>
> > respond to anything. I was able to log off. When I logged back in,
> > Evolution was not running so I clicked on its icon. Something happened
> > but Evolution did not start up. I logged off/on again. Same result. Then
> > I used (gasp!) a Windows technique. I rebooted the system. This worked.
> > Evolution came back up like there had never been a problem. Why I am
> > posting this? Because...
>
> This is a common problem.  Evolution, like Mozilla, probably has a 
> mechanism to prevent multiple copies from running.  The bug you ran
> into put Evolution into a hard loop with signals ignored.  Mozilla
> does this too when I tickle certain bugs.  When you log out, the 
> session manager signals Evolution, but it is ignored.  When you try
> to run evolution again, the new copy it sees that it already running
> and shuts down.
>
> Instead of rebooting, run 'top' or gnome system monitor or 'ps' or other 
> process lister and kill your spastic evolution (or mozilla) process
> with SIGKILL (signal 9).  
>
> You might try signal 3 first to see if you can get a traceback for bug
> reporting.

Thanks. I'll keep your suggestions handy for the next time.
> Why is it so easy for big programs like mozilla and evolution to get
> into hard loops with signals disabled?

That's a very good question.

Don Henson