Keeping an eye on the text console while in X11 ?

[Thierry Herbelot]

Hello,

[long message]

I'm chasing strange freezes on my work PC, with a recent -Current (5.2-SNAP 
from 01/30). The machine is NEC PeeCee, using a Gigabyte MB, a SIS chipset 
and a P4-1,8GHz (dmesg to follow). The kernel is just GENERIC, with all 
debugging options commented out.

sometimes (still, around once a day), when the machine starts swapping, it 
just freezes (it's possible sometimes to switch to a text virtual console and 
see the system messages), and it may unfreeze (or not). As the BIOS enables 
ACPI, it's even possible to shutdown gracefully from the power button.
I have tried to start with all "defensive" options in /boot/loader.conf :
hint.acpi.0.disabled=1
loader.acpi_disabled_by_user=1
hw.ata.ata_dma=0
hw.ata.atapi_dma=0
hw.ata.wc=0
hint.apic.0.disabled=1

and the freezes still happen.

I will try to swap the disk (I did not see any ATA error message, like when 
the driver cannot read one disk sector - SMART is enabled on this disk, and 
the BIOS does not see any SMART error count)

I have added a second (PCI) graphics card to the AGP board, and I'v setup the 
BIOS to use the PCI board as the console, the AGP board is only declared 
in /etc/X11/XF86Config. 
I wanted to see the vty0 messages while being under X11, but it seems as if 
the switch to X11 freezes the vty0, and the display is not refreshed (for 
example, if I leave a "top" in vty0, the display stays frozen with the last 
display).

So [at long last] : is there a way to still have the display of vty0 refreshed 
on the PCI board, while X11 is displayed on the AGP board ?
I suspect the keyboard is the blocking factor here (being exclusively attached 
to vty0 or X11) ?

in the meantime, I'll try to keep an eye on xconsole, hoping all messages end 
up in the window.

	TfH