Re: [gentoo-user] random reboots

[Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:50 PM, Alan E. Davis<lngndvs@gmail.com> wrote:
> My system reboots at seemingly random times.  Usually, this happens
> during keyboard or mouse input.  I have been using kernel 2.6.30-r2.
> Often this happens when using firefox, but not exclusively.

If you can identify when it started, and identify what may have
changed around then, go back to whatever you used before then :)

Otherwise I would suspect hardware, and would start with testing RAM
and things like that. Pull the plug on the hard drive(s) and boot off
a LiveCD and see if it still reboots. Try pulling some of the RAM
modules and see it the problem gets better or worse... things like
that.

Firefox uses a lot of RAM, and would cause network activity, so it's
possible if there's a problem with the network driver or port (or
wireless?), or a RAM issue, maybe its' triggering it because it is a
heavy resource user. I had some weird issues with one particular buggy
build of madwifi a long time ago that would cause weird things to
happen only during heavy network utilization.