[Sheflug] Crashing software

[david <david.willington@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear All

I'm having irritations with crashing software. I'm using Ubuntu 6.06,
with everything installed via the package manager, but I had the same
symptoms with OpenSuse on the same machine (all software installed via
Yast), so I assume the problem's a hardware one. The system is usable
for work, and is used for 8 or so hours a day. The main offender is open
office, which crashes most times I use it. It rescues itself and crashes
without warning. I'm using it only for simple 1 page letters and tiny
spreadsheets. The second worst offender is firefox which will crash a
few times a day, again without warning and with no obvious trigger.
Sometimes the X server goes down (perhaps a couple of times a week) and
I'm left at a login page, and occasionally the system reboots
althogether. RealPlayer also crashes once or twice a day. The system's
being updated as often as necessary via the package manager. Everything
else seems OK, and I'm logged on as a normal user, except for doing
things needing root privileges.

I've just installed Hardinfo which reports the systems as
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
776Mb RAM (2 pieces which I've tested with memtest86 and which seem to
be fine)
GeForce MX 440 graphics card 64Mb (I've also tried another graphics card
which doesn't seem to make any difference) 
VIA motherboard with onboard audio and ethernet. One of the lines has
the following info
VIATachnologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC BusMaster
IDE. 
As far as I can tell from the Suse compatibility list at
http://hardwaredb.suse.de/productSearch.php?PHPSESSID=73e4fcbf109f8215c26f58637b81cb49&LANG=en_UK&update_session=1&searchtype=simple&f_manufactor=via&f_device=&f_groups%5B%5D=6 this should work fine (at least with Suse)
WDC WD205AA HDD (20Gb)
Maxtor 80Gb HDD
LiteOn DVD ROM
Pioneer DVDRW

There's a lot of other info as well about kernel modules

I've tried running top, but there doesn't seem to be any undue strain,
and with half a dozen apps running at the moment, Hardinfo reports about
50% memory usage

Where's the best place to look next?

thanks

David Willington


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