[Vm-dev] We need help from VM experts. Re: Freeze after Morph& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp; Activity

[Juan Vuletich]

I finally understood what was happening. The problem with is primitive 136:

primSignal: aSemaphore atMilliseconds: aSmallInteger
     "Signal the semaphore when the millisecond clock reaches the value 
of the second argument. Fail if the first argument is neither a 
Semaphore nor nil. Essential. See Object documentation whatIsAPrimitive."
<primitive: 136>
     ^self primitiveFailed

If the requested tick is already in the past, all the VMs except for 
Spur-64 will signal the semaphore anyway. Spur-64 won't. Taking care of 
this in the Cuis image was easy enough.

Squeak seems not to be affected because it uses a newer primitive, that 
takes the large integer microsecond ticker, that might have the older 
behavior (signaling anyway). I'm not really sure, and maybe someone 
could check the primitive behavior and the corresponding assumptions in 
Squeak.

Older Squeak images are not affected, as they are all 32-bit. So maybe 
there's no action required. In any case, making the behavior consistent 
across VMs and in both primitives would be nice.

Cheers,

On 3/3/2017 3:55 PM, Juan Vuletich wrote:
>   
>
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> Today, I was able to get closer to the origin of the problem. The 
> problem is when Morphic tries to do a Delay (inter-cycle-pause) of 1 
> or two milliseconds. (Usually they are quite larger, and the problem 
> does not appear). With the 64-bit VM, sometimes very short delays hang 
> the complete system. I don't know why, but this:
>
> waitDelay _ Delay forMilliseconds: 50.
> [ true ] whileTrue: [
>     1000 atRandom print.
>     waitDelay setDelay: 1; wait ].
>
> is enough to hang Cuis in a short time. When trying to reproduce the 
> problem in Squeak I had mixed results. It doesn't seem to hang there, 
> but if I let this run for a couple of minutes and then try to halt 
> with alt-. , then the hang occurs, and Squeak becomes irresponsibe. As 
> a workaround, in Cuis in the inter cycle pause, I'm avoiding very 
> short delays.
>
> I'm not sure if the bug is in the VM, in  the image, or both, but it 
> is still there, and it also affects Squeak. I haven't tried it, but 
> Pharo might also have the problem (if not, it can show a possible 
> solution).
>
> BTW, Bert, I guess Squeak never does short delays in #interCyclePause: ...
>
> Thanks,
>
> On 2/6/2017 12:28 PM, Bert Freudenberg wrote:
>>   
>>
>>
>> Yes, I tried with Spur64. Have not seen it freeze yet on Mac in 
>> Squeak, but we possibly have not replicated the test well enough yet.
>>
>> It *did* freeze in Cuis Spur64 on Mac too.
>>
>> - Bert -
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 2:08 PM, Juan Vuletich <juanvuletich at zoho.com 
>> <mailto:juanvuletich at zoho.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Were you usig Spur64? On Debian it does not freeze with CogV3 or
>>     Spur32. Only with Spur64.
>>
>>     Thanks,
>>     Juan
>>
>>     Sent using Zoho Mail <https://www.zoho.com/mail/>
>>
>>
>>         ---- On Mon, 06 Feb 2017 09:19:48 -0300 *bert at freudenbergs.de
>>         <mailto:bert at freudenbergs.de> * wrote ----
>>
>>         On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 3:15 AM, David T. Lewis
>>         <lewis at mail.msen.com <mailto:lewis at mail.msen.com>> wrote:
>>
>>             It would be interesting to try reproducing this in a
>>             Squeak image, but I
>>             have not quite figured out how to make the Tokenish
>>             example work in Squeak.
>>
>>
>>         See attachment. Did not freeze on Mac with 10 Tokenish jumping.
>>         - Bert -
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> -- 
> Juan Vuletich
> www.cuis-smalltalk.org
> https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
> @JuanVuletich


-- 
Juan Vuletich
www.cuis-smalltalk.org
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Cuis-Smalltalk-Dev
@JuanVuletich

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