How best to debug a crash?

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On Monday 27 November 2006 11:06, Giles Orr wrote:
> On 11/26/06, jim ruxton <cinetron-uEvt2TsIf2EsA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > Occasionally my computer will completely lock up to the point
> > where my only solution is a hard reset. ie. holding in the power
> > button. I'm using Fedora 5. What is the best way to find out what
> > went wrong. Also is there an alternative to the hard reset. I try
> > killing X and that doesn't seem to work. It happens rarely so it
> > is hard to find a pattern in what causes the freeze. Any
> > suggestions what I should do when this happens. Hate to have to
> > do a hard reset on a linux system : ( .
>
> The commonest (but not the only) cause of mystery crashes I've
> found has been bad memory.

The most common causes of mystery crashes I have found to be in this 
order:

1. Flash on any browser - it's only a matter of time before I hit a 
Flash infested site that will cause the disk access light to stay on 
constantly and no keyboard, mouse, or ssh responsiveness.

2. Firefox - same as Flash story above.

3. X,

4. Running Fedora Core :)

Seriously, I had more crashes on the laptop on which I'm typing this 
in the six weeks I ran FC5 than I did in the few years prior. I 
haven't had a single crash since I dumped FC5 and installed Suse 10.1 
on this machine so I know it wasn't a hardware problem.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

+1 416-410-3326
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