Debugging

I use Emacs (emerge) while merging files. Today, when trying to merge some Python code, I found that it was taking exceedingly long time. It was blank for 5 minutes and counting.

This is a story of multiple processes running on a system, but with empty PID files.

It took a lot of debugging.

Have you run into a problem that happens only once in a while, and you never seem to have enough information to figure it out? We all have. This is one such tale: except that it has a happier ending.