bug#30322: Emacs 26 seems to have entered an infinite loop during GC on macOS

bug#30322: Emacs 26 seems to have entered an infinite loop during GC on macOS

[John Wiegley]

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Hi Eli,

I was writing an e-mail to a colleague today when my Emacs window completely froze up, taking 100% CPU constantly.  Since it's still in that state now, I decided to fire up the stochastic profiler to see what it's doing.  I've attached the screenshot.

It claims to be spending all its time in `lisp_align_free', behaving as if there's a CPU busy loop now taking place inside that function. Since very little time is being assigned to its callees, I believe an infinite loop has occurred here:

      int i = 0;
      bool aligned = busy;
      struct ablock **tem = &free_ablock;
      struct ablock *atop = &abase->blocks[aligned ? ABLOCKS_SIZE : ABLOCKS_SIZE - 1];

      while (*tem)
	{
	  if (*tem >= (struct ablock *) abase && *tem < atop)
	    {
	      i++;
	      *tem = (*tem)->x.next_free;
	    }
	  else
	    tem = &(*tem)->x.next_free;
	}

I would like to suggest that before entering this loop, we record the initial value of *tem, and if we encounter again (or if we encounter it again X number of times), we report a non-fatal error and exit this function.  That way I could save my work and restart Emacs.

I've noticed such a "lock up until I force quit" happening before, but it's very rare. Maybe a few times a year?

John

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bug#30322: Emacs 26 seems to have entered an infinite loop during GC on macOS

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

John Wiegley <johnw@newartisans.com> writes:

> I was writing an e-mail to a colleague today when my Emacs window
> completely froze up, taking 100% CPU constantly.  Since it's still in
> that state now, I decided to fire up the stochastic profiler to see
> what it's doing.  I've attached the screenshot.
>
> It claims to be spending all its time in `lisp_align_free', behaving
> as if there's a CPU busy loop now taking place inside that
> function. Since very little time is being assigned to its callees, I
> believe an infinite loop has occurred here:

This was a year ago -- are you still seeing these hangs in Emacs 27?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#30322: Emacs 26 seems to have entered an infinite loop during GC on macOS

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:

> John Wiegley <johnw@newartisans.com> writes:
>
>> I was writing an e-mail to a colleague today when my Emacs window
>> completely froze up, taking 100% CPU constantly.  Since it's still in
>> that state now, I decided to fire up the stochastic profiler to see
>> what it's doing.  I've attached the screenshot.
>>
>> It claims to be spending all its time in `lisp_align_free', behaving
>> as if there's a CPU busy loop now taking place inside that
>> function. Since very little time is being assigned to its callees, I
>> believe an infinite loop has occurred here:
>
> This was a year ago -- are you still seeing these hangs in Emacs 27?

More information was requested, but no response was given within a few
months, so I'm closing this bug report.  If the problem still exists,
please respond to this email and we'll reopen the bug report.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no