On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 12:29:47PM -0600, Glenn English wrote:
> I used to do an amverify after every backup, but I started finding my
> computer frozen every morning after a backup. I've noticed for some
> time, that when I do anything with mt, nothing else can happen on the
> computer until it's finished -- no mouse, no menu-bar clock, nothing.
> 
> Is it *conceivable* that interrupts are being disabled, and somebody's
> doing polling I/O?

I'll grant "conceivable", but not much more.  I haven't heard of such a
thing.

Either way, it's not really a matter for Amanda, but rather for the
in-kernel drivers you're using (a userspace app can't disable interrupts
like that).  That is, if 'mt' is hanging your system, it's probably hung
in the kernel, and Amanda's just going to hang out waiting for it.

Do your kernel logs reveal anything interesting?  Is everything else
*really* dead?  You mention no mouse, which seems to imply X.  X behaves
very badly when it's heavily paged, so if 'mt' or some other application
is burning through CPU and RAM, you might see the behavior you've
described.

Dustin

-- 
        Dustin J. Mitchell
        Storage Software Engineer, Zmanda, Inc.
        http://www.zmanda.com/