spontaneous reboots/ what causes these in general?

[Rob]

On Mon, 05 Dec 2005 10:54:11 -0600
Kevin Kinsey <kdk at daleco.biz> wrote:

> 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.
> 
> -- 
> Apathy Club meeting this Friday.
> If you want to come, you're not invited.
> 
> 

The idea of running Mozilla or Firefox from a terminal was a very good one.  I am getting an error message:  (Gecko:40685) Gdk-WARNING **: gdk_property_get(): length value has wrapped in calculation (did you pass G_MAXLONG?)

I will run that by one of the mozilla.or  lists.

But I am very curious what causes FreeBSD to reboot immediately?  Do renegade apps overwrite some forbidden memory space?  Or do these things come about via crappy bios?  I am wondering that as Gentoo Linux often will not make it through the ACPI part of the boot process, so that it takes a couple of boots before it goes all the way through.  I am using an HP zd8000 laptop.  I have been compiling ports with the -O -pipe -mtune=pentium4.  I am using FreeBSD 6.0 release off of the iso CD.

I should probably cvsup to stable and make buildworld.  That might eliminate some variables.

Rob.