On 12/16/21 10:04 AM, mick crane wrote:
On 2021-12-11 18:58, David Christensen wrote:When a computer gets to the point that it is doing weird things that I cannot understand, troubleshoot, or fix, I download the OS installer of choice, burn it to USB, make sure my configuration files are checked in to CVS, backup my data, remove the system disk, insert a blank system disk, do a fresh install, take an image of the system disk, boot, check out the old configuration files to a side directory, edit the new configuration files (rebooting and testing as I proceed), and restore data. This is the only way I know to get a "clean", and hopefully reliable, OS image.lovely.I've used vi for the last 3 days and it's happened once instead of multiple times.
Assuming the bug is in Debian, it's not Nano and it's not Vi. But Nano somehow increases the bug frequency. And, the intermittent nature leads me to believe it is a race condition. So, it's likely to be down deep (e.g. IRQ device driver).
I'd love it to be user error, well to know what the use error is, but I've been using basic editing with vi/vim for years and this never happened before. Is it at all possible that running Perl executable file somehow shares the same memory as same file opened in vi and they get jumbled?
I seriously doubt it.
I don't understand why the error is random words from elsewhere in the file get randomly inserted as opposed to garbage.
My guess is that the bug is somewhere in the keyboard and mouse input stacks.
I'm inclined to get another PC and see if it still does it.
Whatever you can do to isolate the problem, go for it.Are using a KVM switch? I have an IOGEAR GCS78KIT. It has a power adapter, but can obtain power from any connected computer that provides power. Several of my computers do, so the KVM switch is power cycled only infrequently (when I take the time to disconnect everything, wait 2 minutes, then reconnect everything). Over long periods (months? years?), it can start producing weird UI bugs. I need to bypass it, connect my keyboard, monitor, and mouse directly to a computer with an OS/ applications disk under test, use it for an hour or more, see if the problems exhibit, try another disk and/or machine, etc.
Another potential problem is my PS/2 to USB adapters -- IOGEAR GUC100KM (older) and GUC10KM (newer). I have not seen the random UI weirdness with these, but the newer model tends to lose the connection when the computer powers down (e.g. keyboard and mouse do not work on next boot; I must disconnect the adapter from everything and hot-plug everything to the booted computer).
David