A bit more info, Re: [ale] Limping laptop, locking X11

[John Mills]

ALErs -

On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, John Mills wrote:

> When I start any significant activity (such as moving windows around), the 
> li'l #$%^!! locks up hard: no keyboard, no reset, nada. I get to cycle 
> power to see life again.

The problem occurs with fvwm2, gnome, and even with 'twm', so I suspect it 
is an XFree86 problem. Specs on the laptop claim it has a CT

I thought I had applied all known updates to XFree86-4.2.1, but I'm 
reloading all basic and updated 7.3 'XFree*.rpm's to make sure.

I can bring on the lockup by changing focus from one window to another, 
such as from one xterm to another, or when opening an application that is 
'window-hungry' (i.e., source-navigator). If I just open an xterm and use 
it, or go away to a vtt and use that, I don't see any load buildup.

I do see a 'hostname lookup failure' when I start X, perhaps because I 
never defined a domain. I get a similar message when I start Pine from a 
vtt.

Can anyone suggest things to try, or ways to get more symptoms?

TIA.

 - John Mills
   john.m.mills at alum.mit.edu