[ILUG] Bizarre X crash

[Peter Heslin]

On Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 02:08:43PM -0000, Jeremy Smyth wrote:
> Get this: Using system, it hangs. No mouse response, no KBD response.
> NumLock/CapsLock don't do anything to the lights. Occasional flashes on the
> HDD light. Dead in the water.
> 
> BUT, can telnet in (eth) with no probs. Lynx still lets you browse over
> ppp0, etc. top says X is running at 98%. Kill X, nothing happens on the
> local console, still shows X. In fact, kill all processes in my username,
> still same. 

I had a problem a few years ago that manifested itself in a very similar
way: all of a sudden X would lock up, then I could not kill X, even
with signal 9 from root, and then very spooky behavior of all sorts.
Eventually I determined that, despite first appearances, the problem was
not X in particular, but any CPU-intensive task.  So I opened up the
box, and lo and behold the CPU fan had died (this was a
very-slightly-overclocked Cyrix, and so very susceptible to
overheating).

To rule out the sort of problem I had, you could try stressing the box
in console mode by compiling the kernel -- if the same thing happens as
with X, and/or Signal 11's, kernal panics and such, then you have a
hardware (overheating, bad memory, etc.) problem.

Peter