Steps to reproduce: 1. ssh into my machine from somewhere else 2. fire up emacs in terminal mode 3. suspend the emacs process with C-z 4. violently kill the ssh process on the other machine, so that it doesn't send a clean logout Symptoms: The emacs process remains alive on my machine, quickly climbs to 100% CPU usage, and gradually allocates more and more memory, apparently stopping at 2GB. It doesn't respond to SIGINT (kill [pid]); I have to send it a SIGKILL to get my machine back. If I strace the running process, I get the following lines repeated forever: gettimeofday({1296499016, 975065}, NULL) = 0 gettimeofday({1296499016, 975102}, NULL) = 0 gettimeofday({1296499016, 975128}, NULL) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [IO], [HUP TERM IO], 8) = 0 ioctl(3, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) kill(1793, SIGHUP) = 0 ioctl(3, SNDCTL_TMR_TIMEBASE or TCGETS, 0xbfc0fba8) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) ioctl(3, SNDCTL_TMR_TIMEBASE or TCGETS, 0xbfc0fb14) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) ioctl(3, SNDCTL_TMR_STOP or TCSETSW, {B0 -opost -isig -icanon -echo ...}) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) write(3, "\7", 1) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) gettimeofday({1296499016, 975503}, NULL) = 0 gettimeofday({1296499016, 975529}, NULL) = 0 gettimeofday({1296499016, 975555}, NULL) = 0 rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, [IO], [HUP TERM IO], 8) = 0 ioctl(3, FIONREAD, [0]) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) kill(1793, SIGHUP) = 0 ioctl(3, SNDCTL_TMR_TIMEBASE or TCGETS, 0xbfc0fba8) = -1 EIO (Input/output error) FD 3 is /dev/tty, if that's relevant. In my limited experience, it looks like something weird is happening in the SIGHUP handler, possibly trying to send some data to the disconnected TTY and repeating when that causes an error. But really I've no idea, so I'll leave it at that and hope the strace is useful. I'd like to attach GDB to get a stack trace, but I didn't install from source and it would be kinda a hassle to switch unless someone tells me that will be useful. In GNU Emacs 23.1.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 2010-11-23 on rothera, modified by Debian Windowing system distributor `The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.10706000 configured using `configure '--build=i486-linux-gnu' '--host=i486-linux-gnu' '--prefix=/usr' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib' '--localstatedir=/var/lib' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--with-pop=yes' '--enable-locallisppath=/etc/emacs23:/etc/emacs:/usr/local/share/emacs/23.1/site-lisp:/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.1/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp:/usr/share/emacs/23.1/leim' '--with-x=yes' '--with-x-toolkit=lucid' '--with-toolkit-scroll-bars' 'build_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=i486-linux-gnu' 'CFLAGS=-DDEBIAN -g -O2' 'LDFLAGS=-g' 'CPPFLAGS='' Important settings: value of $LC_ALL: nil value of $LC_COLLATE: nil value of $LC_CTYPE: nil value of $LC_MESSAGES: nil value of $LC_MONETARY: nil value of $LC_NUMERIC: nil value of $LC_TIME: nil value of $LANG: en_US.UTF-8 value of $XMODIFIERS: nil locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix default-enable-multibyte-characters: t Major mode: Lisp Interaction Minor modes in effect: global-auto-complete-mode: t auto-complete-mode: t delete-selection-mode: t tooltip-mode: t tool-bar-mode: t mouse-wheel-mode: t menu-bar-mode: t file-name-shadow-mode: t global-font-lock-mode: t font-lock-mode: t blink-cursor-mode: t global-auto-composition-mode: t auto-composition-mode: t auto-encryption-mode: t auto-compression-mode: t column-number-mode: t line-number-mode: t transient-mark-mode: t Recent input: C-x k Recent messages: Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50emacs-goodies-el.el (source)...done Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50git-core.el (source)...done Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50psvn.el (source)...done Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50slime.el (source)... Loading /usr/share/emacs23/site-lisp/slime/slime-autoloads...done Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50slime.el (source)...done Loading delsel...done Loading /home/akm/.emacs.d/elpa/package.el (source)...done Loading /home/akm/src/clojure/cdt/ide/emacs/cdt.el (source)...done For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a. [2 times] -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Alan Malloy HubPages software engineer 415-273-9702 alan.malloy@yieldbuild.com