[UUG/MLUG] Linux blew to pieces

["Skreech" <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

My Linux box just blew to pieces three times in a row... 
twice I was pico-ing some text file and a third I was cat-
ing a large logfile, and suddenly the system locked 
completely up and displayed vertical lines (this is in 
textmode)...

This disappoints me, since it's the first time I've ever had 
a Linux crash.

Ever!

>From the assorted clues, I've come up with these that 
seem relevant:

SVGATextMode is setting my textmode to 132x60 
instead of the usual 80x25.

The video card is an S3 Trio32/64. It strains to do 
1024x768 in X.

Each crash happened during a time when it was in 
textmode and while I was editing or viewing a textfile.

Efforts (catting 3 and 4 meg textfiles over and over) to 
crash the machine in 80x25 mode have failed so far.

Efforts to crash it in X by scrolling a lot of text and 
running some screensavers at max priority and full speed 
only result in a show of pretty colors (no crash)


This sorta leads me to believe that the video card may be 
to blame, and perhaps the high text-mode could be 
causing the crashing, in which case Linux would not be 
at fault. Furthermore, the crash kinda "looks like 
hardware" since it locks up without any harddrive activity, 
occurs quite suddenly, and stops responding to any 
network stuff like pinging or the like. Complete lock.

I'd be glad if it's the video card, in which case I could still 
go on saying Linux has never crashed on me...

Please, any input at all, suggestions for tests... etc.

Gavin Cooper