FreeBSD 5.3-SMP/IRQ problems (again)

[Jason W. Barnes]

> SMP is impossible, w/ or w/o ACPI. FreeBSD 5.3 dies after a while of 
> doing graphical output with the X11 GUI. I stressed the machine today 
> with buildworld and build kernel and building openoffice 1.1.4 with 
> console output and for 15 hours the box was stable as a rock. But 
> switching to the X11 GUI doing some FireFox jobs (simply surfing the 
> www) let the system die within minutes. Sometimes I can 'feel' when a 
> crash is arising, the box is a kind of 'calm' and I can switch to the 
> console sometimes catching the error message from the debugger, but 
> sometimes not.

 	I was having a similar problem with FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE whereby 
the system was totally stable without SMP, and totally stable with SMP 
while X wasn't running, but where the system would hang after between zero 
and 5 minutes of running X.  Sometimes it would lock up even before X got 
started.  I'm running a dual Athlon system on an Asus A7M266-D.
 	I fixed the problem by removing modules in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and 
found that removing:

 	Load  "dri"

from the "Module" section stopped the freezes, and returned my system to 
full stability.
 	I don't know what the dri module does, so I don't know what I'm 
missing, but everything seems to run okay now.
 	Just in case someone else encounters the parent post with the same 
problem,

 				- Jason Barnes