Everything randomly generates .core files

[Chuck Swiger]

Eric Schuele wrote:
> I'm having some difficulties with 5.3-RELEASE.  I have made a fresh 
> install from the iso image I downloaded.  Formatted the entire drive, 
> just to make sure it was clean.  I have installed everything of interest 
> via the ports tree.  But many things seem to fail randomly.  I can use 
> xfe for a while, then blip its gone.  pptpclient is the same.  Fluxbox 
> generates .core files as well... but its never shutdown on me.  xprop 
> has generated a few too.  Doesn't seem to be any one app.

This certainly sounds like a hardware issue like overheating or RAM going bad. 
  Try running www.memtest.org overnight and see whether it finds anything.

> I was previously using 5.3-BETA7 and did not have these problems.  The 
> only thing I did different this time was to make things from the ports 
> tree instead of pkg_add everything.

There shouldn't be a difference between the two, unless you've set up unusual 
compiler flags.  Check the messages under /var/log, are you seeing SIGILLs 
(signal #4), or SIGSEGVs (#11)?  If you are seeing signal 4's, and you 
compiled with -march=XXX, where XXX is not appropriate for your CPU, well, 
don't do that.  :-)

> (Sorry if this message is not wrapped at 72 char... thunderbird is 
> wrapping it in the gui... but not in the message!?!?)

It was fine, although the consideration is appreciated.  Your MUA is creating 
messages using:

Content-type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset=us-ascii

...which contains text properly wrapped for the 80-column crowd.

-- 
-Chuck