We've had maybe 40 Linux crashes over the last week. Only ever when running X. Things were similarly bad when I started using 1600x1200 mode, but improved after Red Hat released some XFree86 updates a couple of months back. Similar problems at work, where XFree86 4.2.0 greatly reduced the crash incidence.
But about a week ago, things got really bad here again. At first I thought the new 350W power supply was going west. But now, the evidence seems to point much more strongly at crashes caused by X11. I'm getting most suspicious of Netscape, though. The machine crashed again tonight while I was using Netscape (every crash for me over the last week has been while using Netscape...). I'm loathe to run it up and check the version and crash the machine before sending this! I think it's 4.78 (whatever came with RH 7.2). After tonight's crash I stopped using netscape, and started using Konqueror instead. Two hours later, and no problem. (Wish I knew how to tell a running Konq process to accept a URL from the commandline, rather than start a fresh window. A minor nuisance when clicking on links from plain text email.) Hmm - I even quit (from konqueror) just then, which is something that's been pretty sure to cause a crash over the last several days, (quitting from netscape after using it for an hour or more). Very puzzling still, but at least it's a clue. (No explanation for why things suddenly went bad a week ago. I hadn't done any system updates. Though I did do an up2date update several days into this bad patch. Nothing X11 related at all, except a new PNG library. If anything, crashes happened slightly more reliably afterwards. Hmm.) I've downloaded the latest version of Netscape series 4 (4.79). and might give that a try too, in case it's less crash-causing. But I'll try running netscape-less for a bit more, first. (I've held back on installing the XFree86 4.2.0 RPMs from RH 7.3 on my home 7.2 system because I've been told it's a little tricky.) Not sure, though. We've also had weird noises from the power supply (once only, and powered down for the rest of the day), and an overnight bare-metal memory test utility just locked up at some stage - I'd guess after about 4 hours. So I wouldn't mind betting that as usual (sigh), I've been lucky enough to have several problems crop up at the same time. Just thought I'd share the experiences. If I work out the problem, I'll post again with the answer. Cheers, luke -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
