[plug] strange happenings - advice needed

[Jason Nicholls]

G'day People,

Recently my system has begun to 4do strange things and I'm trying to narrow down
the problem. In my opinion it is likely to be the video card. Here are the
symptoms:

1. Sometimes I will get a segfault (signal 11) when trying to start X, quake3
   or xmame (xmame.xgl). After starting however, they run fine. Example,
   trying to start X i'll do "startx (fail); startx (fail); startx (works)".
   Sometimes it may work the first time, others on the 5th etc... Same with
   Quake3 and xmame. Quitting (working) q3 and immediately starting it again 
   doesn't result in any better luck either.

2. It doesn't happen when switching resolution in X (ctrl alt +/-).

3. nothing else is effected at all. No processes are dying, no other signal
   11's, no corruption etc...

4. 2 complete system lockups (ie: frozen solid)

I've checked the integrity of relevant packages such as X and found no
problems. One thing that IS common is the GL aspect of things. The X server
will segfault after loading the glx module and both Q3 and xmame.xgl are GL
games. Note that I haven't touched my GL stuff for quite a while.

Note, while writing this I did a kernel compile without problems too.

What do people think?


Later,

Jason Nicholls
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason Nicholls    icq: 11745841    email: <jason at mindsocket.com.au>
Proprietor                        mobile: 0417 410 811
Mind Socket [web services]          http://www.mindsocket.com.au/
--------------------------------------------------------------------