> On May 13, 2025, at 11:25 PM, Damien Stewart <hype...@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>
> On 13/5/25 6:08 am, Ken Cunningham wrote:
>> It's challenging to debug firefox.
>>
>> I have 3.5G of RAM, and I added an 8G swapfile, and with that firefox will
>> run under gdb but it takes 15-18 minutes for firefox to start. It uses a lot
>> of swapfile.
>
> That's a long time. When I first tested it under gdb I found my HDD thrashing
> because I had left an old swap partition active. Or actually the installer
> would have picked it up. I setup an SSD that I've dedicated to Linux installs
> but didn't add a swap partition too. Do you run it from SSD?
At present, not from an SSD. It has been working OK until these challenges.
I guess it's about time to repurpose one of my other SSDs to this system. I'll
find one of the older, slower ones from the junk box that I took out of another
system during an upgrade, and hopefully it will be compatible.
Otherwise this is not going to be pleasant.
>
> I did add swap to my SSD but managed to install 8GB to my machine so I could
> load it into pure memory. That reduces it to around 2 minutes load time.
> Should time it.
>
>> Then when you start interacting with is (eg ask it to open a website) it
>> does a hard crash and locks up the system, with no opportunity to backtrace.
>>
>> Turns out gdb logging is off by default -- I'll turn that on and see if I
>> can capture anything before it downs the system.
>
> Do you have any way of attaching a terminal? My system has a serial port so
> it's easy enough for me to do it the "old fashioned" way over serial cable
> with a "console=ttyS0" added to my kernel command line. Don't know if a G5
> Mac USB supports but I found USB2/3 has a debug feature that's pretty much a
> modern drop in replacement for a serial port link. Just needs activating in
> kernel and the right USB cable. So kinda like the old way as you need a
> modern USB null modem cable now. :-)
>
>
So far I have not got into debugging remotely from another system like that.
I'm not sure what method would work best for my Apple Dual G5 PowerMac 7,1 (I
recall it's a 7,1 -- hopefully that is right). I know these systems can do
that, I read about kernel debugging in MacOS using two machines. I think those
instructions were with an ethernet cable, but that is MacOS there.
> --
> My regards,
>
> Damien Stewart.
>
