Very strange rxvt problem - game hangs when it is running

[Igor Pechtchanski]

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Jonathan Arnold wrote:

> Igor Pechtchanski wrote:
> > On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Jonathan Arnold wrote:
> >
> > > > > > > 1] Run "Day of Defeat" - connects and runs just fine.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > 2] Start rxvt.  Try "DoD" again. It gets about halfway
> > > > > > > through its startup process, then hangs.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > 3] Quit rxvt and try again. "DoD" works fine.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > I tried the same procedure with the regular Cygwin bash
> > > > > > > shell, and it behaves the same way.
> > > > > > > [snip]
> > > > > > > Any ideas on what it could be?
> > > > > >
> > > > > > A WAG, and I may be really off on this: Cygwin uses TCP/IP
> > > > > > sockets (which essentially require a TCP/IP port) to emulate
> > > > > > Unix domain sockets.  If rxvt reserves a Unix domain socket
> > > > > > (even if it's not using X), and DoD tries to access the same
> > > > > > port, because it's somehow predefined and it expects it to be
> > > > > > free, there could be a conflict.  I can't think of anything
> > > > > > else in Cygwin that would interfere with a (presumably)
> > > > > > non-Cygwin application.
> > > > >
> > > > > Well, unless the regular bash shell does it too, that probably
> > > > > isn't correct. Like I said, it is very weird and it took me some
> > > > > time to figure it out.
> > > >
> > > > The "regular bash" that you tried is really a login shell.  That
> > > > *can* run X-related stuff, e.g., from /etc/profile.d scripts.  A
> > > > real test would be to try a non-login bash (just run
> > > > "c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe -i" from a CMD prompt).  If that doesn't
> > > > interfere with DoD, it would make my WAG more probable.
> > > > Otherwise we'll have to look for other possible reasons.
> > >
> > > Okay, I tried it this way too, and it still hangs DoD.  FWIW,
> > > running MSYS (MinGW's bash), does not hang DoD.
> > >
> > > Very Odd.
> >
> > Yep.  Curiouser and curiouser...  Does *any* Cygwin process have that
> > effect?  Try running "c:\cygwin\bin\sleep.exe 60" from a CMD prompt --
> > does *that* make DoD hang?
>
> Strangely enough, yes that too does make DoD hang.
>
> How very very strange.

Well, I guess you found a reliable way to delay the startup of DoD on your
friends' computers for 20 seconds if you ever need to -- just install
Cygwin and run "sleep 20". :-)

Seriously, though -- must be something in the Cygwin DLL inner workings
that's doing this, and it can't be the networking subsystem (as 'sleep'
doesn't use it, AFAIK).  One guess is that Cygwin interferes with one of
the DLLs that DoD needs to load, but that would result in a failure, not a
hang...  Other possibilities may be that Cygwin uses some Windows API call
that does something with the network on your system, and that freezes DoD
(in which case other applications may do this as well), or that the name
of some shared memory region coincides (I'm really grasping at straws
here, you know)...

See if the Windows Event Log contains any messages that could be connected
with this...  You might also want to try some of the system monitoring
tools at <http://sysinternals.com/>, to perhaps trace the DoD startup in
both cases and compare the traces...  In short, you'll probably have to
debug this yourself, sorry.
	Igor
-- 
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