Linux-kernel mailing list archive 1998-31,: VERY STRANGE bug in 2.0.35 console display code

# VERY STRANGE bug in 2.0.35 console display code

Mike A. Harris (mharris@ican.net)
Mon, 3 Aug 1998 15:38:09 -0400 (EDT)

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I just had the strangest thing occur, and I think it might be
related to the Xwindows screen garble problem that people have
been having with 2.0.x.

I'm assuming you know what I mean when I say "X windows screen
garble problem".

Here is what just happened to me:

I have 2 machines connected via PLIP. When doing any sort of
traffic on the PLIP cable, I get a fair amount of plip timeout
messages on my console. This annoys me to no end, but that is
easily fixed by commenting the line out in plip.c.

I just telnetted to the machine on the other end of the PLIP, and
ran mke2fs to format a partition. The badblocks command was
displaying an update of what sector was being tested, and this
caused an endless stream of annoying PLIP timeout messages on all
my console screens.

At the time, I was on another console editing the main kernel
makefile, and was pressing CTRL-R (in joe) to refresh the screen
and get rid of the kernel messages. I was also scrolling in the
file at the same time.

My screen was abducted! In the makefile, I was looking at the
"make modules" part. The line starts with "modules:".

This is difficult to describe so I'll try as best I can. While
the display was scrolling (from me hitting down-arrow), I was
pressing CTRL-R to keep the screen refreshed, then I let go
of CTRL-R, and scrolled down some more. This time however, the
line that started out "modules:" didn't scroll properly. The
"modules:" part stayed put on the screen, however the rest of the
line, and all lines above and below that scrolled no problem.
The word modules: disappeared from the file where it normally
was.

As soon as the plip messages stopped coming on the screen, this
behaviour stopped immediately.

Any ideas as to what could cause this, and what a possible
solution might be?

    --
    Mike A. Harris  -  Computer Consultant  -  Linux advocate

    Escape from the confines of Microsoft's operating systems and push your
    PC to it's limits with LINUX - a real OS. http://www.redhat.com

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