During the last week gentoo system was all updated and recompiled, latest kernel 2.6.31.5 was compiled and booted. Then after using it quite shortly I noticed, that sometimes its just impossible to do ~ su or login at vt-s. Its unclear to me why it happens, my guesses were new kernel, new pam configuration by portage, hibernation, but its very unclear. How to debug something like that and what could cause it?? Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge --sync 2. emerge -1 gcc glibc 3. emerge -euDN system /resolve blockers/ 4. emerge -euDN world /resolve blockers/ 5. compile 2.6.31.5 kernel, run it 6. casual usage -- could't find what exactly triggers that behaviour. Actual Results: At some apparently random point of time: 1) Cannot login into vt - ends with an infinite waiting at black screen. Ctrl+C ends it with new unsuccessful try to log in. 2) Cannot su - similarly, just cannot end su in any other way than # kill -KILL, so might end up with locked process 3) Cannot ssh - similar. Expected Results: can login Curiously, I just spent quite a bit of time trying to hibernate, mount filesystems, su, ssh and then cause the problem, but couldn't... Should I consider latest kernel or nvidia drivers a problem? Could pam be to blame with its new configuration (which I just allowed etc-update to merge)? PS: sorry for the unclarity, but what can I do if system needs to be used and I have no idea what really could be wrong. If that happened for some 3-4 times, may happen again.
Who knows? For example, the latest xorg is not compatible with the latest nvidia-drivers. But this is just one thing. I would also *not* advise to run etc-update without checking to see what is happening. Surely, you can't expect debugging help over bugzilla. Why don't you try the Gentoo forums or #gentoo on IRC? The bug-wranglers will probably close this and invalid or so, don't be angry...bugzilla is not a support channel, it is for reporting bugs. :)
Well, then what can be done... I mainly wanted to know if you are deeming it wrong to run the latest vanilla kernel or that default PAM config could be to blame?
If anyone watching this - it seems like dcron was to blame! I'll be sure later, however there was a problem with dcron and its mails sending, which apparently could not send anything out. Perhaps I should fill a bugreport about dcron.
