The guy down the hall complains that some of his desktop applications are hanging with long delays. He has dual opterons with RHEL4 (X86_64 version). He first noticed it with gcalctool, the gnome desktop calculator. If he clicks the buttons fast enough, it will quit responding. It sits there for about a minute, then resumes for a while. He also says he has seen the same behavior clicking the "back" button on ggv. Apparently this behavior began "recently".

I ran strace on gcalctool. While it's hung, it's waiting for input on unit 16. That means nothing to me.

The only recent system changes are Redhat updates for mutt, php, vixie-cron, openoffice, and the kernel. I have been messing with a UPS on this box, with mixed results. None of those seems to be a likely cause.

Could possibly be a kernel thing. The other updates should be unrelated. Does downgrading kernel cause behavior to return to 'normal'?

Thanks. Backing up to the previous kernel fixed the problems. By the way, it had also quit producing sounds.

For the record, the "bad" kernel is version 2.6.9-34.0.2.ELsmp. I have made a complaint to Redhat.