Re: Ultra 5 SSH/Ethernet Lockup

[Francis Devereux <francis@devrx.org>]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003 00:46:37 +0000 (UTC)
Kristjan Onu <onu@29.ca> wrote:

> > Also for what it's worth, I haven't seen such problems into a U5,
> > either with the Woody libssl or later 0.9.6 ones with v9
> > optimization.
> 
> I'm glad to hear others are successfully using U5s. I'm leaning toward
> saying there's a hardware problem, but it must not be with the network
> card since I've tried the built-in network card as well as a 3Com.
> 
> Can anyone suggest where else to look? (I think I've heard compiling a
> kernel is a good way to test memory.) Any log files that might point
> to faulty hardware?
> 
> One point I forgot to mention in my original post is that connecting
> from the server back to itself (ie. ssh localhost) seems to work
> without fail.

ssh needs a source of randomness to operate (/dev/random), which in turn
needs a pool of entropy which is fed from things like the keyboard
interrupt.  Your lockups could be caused by sshd stalling because the
entropy pool is empty - can you try the following:

1) ssh to the U5 remotely
2) use the ssh connection until it locks up
3) go over and press some keys on the U5's keyboard

and see if the hang is (temporarily) resolved.  If so you could try
allowing entropy to be gathered from more sources, I can't remember how
to do this but googling should give you the answer...

Francis