If I run some program in xterm and break it, with probability about 5% the X server starts consuming 100% CPU for about 20 seconds, the systems becomes very unresponsive, and xterm stops redrawing the window. Then xterm redraws the window and the system gets back to normal again. To see which process does the DoS I used top (which is very hard to start quickly enough under the condition). It happened to me repeatedly with netcat printing out some UDP packets and mtr program as well. Reproducible: Sometimes Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Portage 2.0.51.22-r3 (default-linux/x86/2005.0, gcc-3.3.6, glibc-2.3.5-r2, 2.6.12-gentoo-r10 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.12-gentoo-r10 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.50GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 dev-lang/python: 2.3.5-r2, 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r10 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.20 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=i686 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" LC_ALL="en_US.UTF-8" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X aac aalib alsa apm arts audiofile avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdr crypt cups curl dga divx4linux dri dv dvd dvdread eds emboss encode esd ethereal exif expat fam ffmpeg fftw flac flash foomatic foomaticdb fortran ftp gd gdbm gif glut gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 guile icq idn imagemagick imap imlib ipv6 jabber jack java javascript jpeg kde lcms ldap libcaca libg++ libwww live matroska mhash mikmod ming mmap mmx mng motif mozilla mp3 mpeg mysql nas ncurses nls ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl php png python qt quicktime readline real recode ruby samba sdl sharedmem shorten slang socks5 speex spell sse ssl svg svga tcltk tcpd tetex theora threads tiff tls truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode vorbis wifi win32codecs wmf xine xinerama xml xml2 xmms xpm xv xvid zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
Are you able to reproduce this with other terms besides xterm?
Same goes for reproducability using modular X. Please reopen when you answer both questions.
