[gentoo-dev] Serious: XFree halts system with some C++ codes running (in particular, Diffpack) on SMP kernel 2.4.19-gentoo-r7

[Denis Shcherbakov <deniss@Princeton.EDU>]

Hello,

I have a very freaky problem here.  I recently ran a few major updates,
such as glibc, threading libraries, some other libraries, and XFree86
4.2.1.  Now the C++ codes that I have to run (in a package called
Diffpack) invoke total system halt.  Screen turns off and goes into
power-save mode, and hard-drive light comes up.  All daemons hang (i can
no longer ssh to my PC after such crash).  With the older X, 4.2.0, I
observed the same kind of system halt, but it was not as frequent as it is
now.  Now, the code runs for several minutes, and the system crashes.

When I booted in TEXT mode, without starting X, this problem DID NOT
OCCUR!!!!  I have no idea what to do.  I got Nvidia GeForce3 chipset in my
system, and I use nvidia's GLX and kernel modules provided with Gentoo.  I
can provide my XF86Config file to anyone who'd be willing to look at it.
I disabled DPMS in the extensions module, but the problem persists.  I
wonder if there are other extension modules I should disable.  I also use
the option "NvAGP" "1", but I have crashes without it just the same.

The codes are run remotely on my machine by one of the users via SSH.

This is the first time I've ever seen anything like this.  Ever since I
installed Gentoo in August 2002, I had not a single major problem!

System details:  2 2.2 GHz Intel Xeons with hyperthreading technology,
Tyan motherboard, 2 IDE Western Digital hard-drives, nVidia GeForce3
chipset on ASUS V8200 card.  I have 2.4.19-gentoo-r7 kernel with SMP
enabled (never had any problems with the kernel before).  XFree 4.2.1,
latest glibc, and other libraries relating to C and C++.

ANY help would be greatly appreciated!!  I really have no idea what to do
and I really do not have time to try to solve this on my own!!

Thank you in advance!
Denis


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