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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: improved Crash Dialog needed
From:       Christian Lavoie <clavoie () bmed ! mcgill ! ca>
Date:       2002-08-25 22:06:39
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On Sábado 24 Agosto 2002 06:17, Michael Pye wrote:
> On Saturday 24 August 2002 10:37 am, Ryan Cumming wrote:
> > We'd have to try really hard to only trigger the dialog in actual thrash
> > situations. Ideally, it would trigger on GCC, but only if it almost hangs
> >the computer.
>
> Well that's where the difficulty lies. People on older computers are gonna
> be less than happy if it triggers continuously even though they know their
> computers are not up to much. I think it sounds like it would cause more
> problems than it solved.

The actual difficulty is worse than that: You're trying to fix an OS and X 
Server problem by putting a cute dialog telling the user: "Oops, fucked up. 
Sorry"

Sure enough, OSes and X servers will always crash, somehow, in some weird 
situation. Those are called bugs, and no one can ever permanently get rid of 
them (just yet).

There is something in the linux kernel called 'Out of memory handler', which 
is really what you need: It kills any application that is about to starve the 
kernel out of resources (due to aggressive VM optimizations). And that's 
really the only place you can do that, only the kernel can REALLY know if 
something's about to starve or kill the machine (if anyone can know it at 
all). Same for unresponsiveness, that's only because the kernel and X don't 
cooperate enough to give user interaction priority over resource-usage-bound 
processes (as opposed to user-interaction-bound processes)

Same for the X server: An X server crash is really just an X server bug, and 
no KDE dialog will ever really fix the problem. Things like valgrind, gdb, X 
unit testing and video card manufacturers who give a damn about their drivers 
will help much more.

In the end, a good X crash will deny you the ability to even show a dialog 
anyway.

Sorry, I think the real solution's out of KDE's hands =(

There's hope, with kernel preemption, rmap, and newer X versions that fix 
bugs. In the end, we have to bug the XFree86 guys to give us better servers 
(which they are doing quite well, frankly), or to push framebuffer support in 
Linux. But in open source, and in kernel land in particular: Send a patch or 
lose the right to complain.

> > Also, applications running as root would be out of its reach. It's just
> > too dangerous to suggest killing various applications that don't belong
> > to the user.
>
> I suppose that does kind of satisfy me, I don't use gcc as a normal user as
> much because I use gentoo where the whole thing is nicely integrated. :)

Have fun,
Chris

-- 
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.

Christian Lavoie, clavoie@bmed.mcgill.ca
http://www.christianlavoie.com
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