spontaneous reboots

[Kevin Kinsey]

Rob wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I am experiencing occasionally spontaneous reboots.  They 
>seem to occur when I am using Xorg and Mozilla.  However, the 
>last time it happened I exited Mozilla, started Gnumeric, then 
>when I tried to exit Gnumeric Xorg locked up and the machine rebooted.
>
>I couldn't find any messages in the logs relating to this.  
>I have noticed, however, that Mozilla creates zombie processes.  
>Even in Windows I have that problem with Mozilla.  Maybe I need 
>to find another WWW browser, but some of the others are based on Mozilla.
>
>How should I go about debugging the problem?
>  
>

Umm, "very carefully"? ;-)

Just a few thoughts:

1.  Try running Mozilla from a terminal, so that output
can be viewed/reviewed when it crashes.  Better yet,
capture the output with script(1) or creative use of
shell redirection, etc.

2.  How's your swap space?

3.  You assert there's "nothing in the logs" --- not
that I'm calling your dumb, but are you sure?  What
about the X server logs?  (I only ask because, on occasion
I've mailed the list saying "I checked the logs" and all
I really meant was "I checked /var/log/messages..."

4.  Can you cause a crash by running some (other)
heavy load ... for example, buildworld ?  Overheating
components, though rare (perhaps), often are responsible,
as you may well already be aware.

Sorry for my "grasping at straws".  Good luck!

Kevin Kinsey
DaleCo, S.P.

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