Message-ID: <4C420EE0.8010906@sylvan-glade.com>
Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2010 13:13:20 -0700
From: Ray Simard <rhs DOT cygwin AT sylvan-glade DOT com>
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Subject: Strange and sudden misbehavior switching to shell window (X)
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Hello.

Something very strange has just started happening, and which I don't
seem mentioned on this list so far.  It is this:

I customarily have at least one, and usually several, Cygwin-X bash
shell windows open constantly. (I was briefly without that ability a
little while ago and felt nearly crippled.)  I've been doing that for
years now.

Over the past several days, when I attempt to switch to one of them with
ALT-TAB or clicking the taskbar, usually nothing changes; the current
window stays up.  Sometimes the X window comes up after a long (maybe
half a minute or so) delay.  If I right-click on the X icon on the tray
and try again, usually several times, or sometimes after just clicking
back and forth among things for a while, it will eventually come up.

Here are some key facts about this:

1. Sometimes, unpredictably, the problem will disappear and things will
be normal for a while.

2. Cygwin installed from scratch about a month ago, with no problems
until now.

3. bash shells in the cmd.com (non-X) windows can be switched to
instantly without exception.  Only the X variety has the problem.

4. Launching a fresh X shell window runs a little show but usually works
OK before too long; I can't swear that it's slower than usual, but it
might be.  (Same with launching the X server.) It's only when switching
to an already-running one that has the problem.

5. Nothing else seems to be out of the ordinary.

6. Uninstalling and reinstalling everything under the X11 subtree
doesn't change anything.


My immediate thoughts are:

1. Malware (Some kind of stealth X11 grabber?)   NAV (which I keep for
historical reasons), sysinternals RootkitRevealer and Spybot S & D don't
turn up anything.  I have sysinternals Process Explorer running all the
time too, and see nothing untoward there, though malware can hide.

2. A failing disk.  I don't think that's very likely, since browsing all
over the disks in the system (there are several), particularly in the
Cygwin intallation, the Windows home volume and temp areas doesn't seem
unusual.  The only way I can think of that a disk would matter here is
if virtual memory were involved, and that would no doubt manifest itself
in other ways as well.


Any ideas? It's getting very tiresome very fast.  Much thanks in advance.

Ray Simard

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