mbuff in 2.2.14 rtlinux-2.2

[Ray <rehenry-at-up.net>]

Folk

This should only be a problem with rtlinux-2.0 or later.

I've been running the EMC as a user rather than root for some time and
have found an interesting problem that crops up now and again.

After exiting the EMC, mbuff seems to get captured by another
process.  Then when I start EMC again it seems to share mbuff and after
a few starts and stops it doesn't run properly at all.  The sysmptoms are
a very slow start of emc and there are big delays in the mouse functions
when using tkemc.

In order to run as a user, one thing I had to do is:

chmod a=rw /dev/mbuff

It would appear from xosview that when this problem occurrs, mbuff is
causing my system to use 100% of the processor's power. (perhaps this is
related to the problem noted in a recent post by Jan)

After this error has occurred I get this report from lsmod:

Module                  Size  Used by 
mbuff                   5356   3 

And when I run the EMC I get delayed responses from tkemc and the
following report from lsmod.

Module                  Size  Used by
steppermod            152652   0  (unused)
rtl_fifo                7336   0  (unused)
rtl_posixio             6684   0  [rtl_fifo]
rtl_sched              36756   0  [steppermod]
rtl_time               14080   0  [steppermod rtl_posixio rtl_sched]
mbuff                   5356   7  [steppermod]          

The only way I seem to be able to fix the problem is to reboot.  Any hints 

Ray