Excerpts from mail: 22-Jan-96 Re: Crashes with XFree86 by "Brian J.
Fox"@samsara.c 
>        I've configured XFree86 for my system, and when I run it, before the
>    first Xterm can even finish loading, the machine locks hard.
> 
> I had a similar problem.  Paring down the fonts that I listed in
> XF86Config essentially solved the problem for me.
> 
> You can test this out by simply commenting out all of the FontPath
> lines except for 75dpi and misc:

Brian,
    I tried this, but it really didn't help.  It really seems to be some
kind of interaction with the mouse and hard drive.  I've found that
sometimes I can keep things from crashing by very carefully starting up
processes one at a time.  The most important issue seems to be not to
move the mouse while the hard disk is being accessed.  Though I have had
it crash a few times without having to move the mouse, it seems to
happen much more often if the mouse is moving.  And as I said before, it
always crashes while the SCSI bus light is on.
    During one crash, the kernel listed a set of errors, which I wish I
could have copied down before the system died.  The first 15 or so
messages were concerning ed0: (a WD 8013W C 10base-T card), and invalid
packets.  Then there was a set of errors from ncr0:, something about an
error #6 or something like that, then a comment about the SCSI bus being
dead, then it restarted the SCSI bus, sd0: reported, and the machine
locked.  I wish I could be less vague, but that's about all I caught
before it crashed.  I've tried reproducing the kernel errors, but have
been unsuccessful.

    I had never thought that the Ethernet card might be involved, but
seeing it mentioned in the kernel errors wasn't very reassuring.  Plus,
during this same session, at several times various lines on the screen
just became a garbled mess.  Fortunately, for all the times I've played
with it today, it hasn't trashed my CMOS settings any more.

Once again:
ASUS PCI/I-4SP3G, DX4/100, 16MB, NCR SCSI
NetBSD 1.1  on two SCSI drives
STB PowerGraph 64 (S3 Trio64V+)
Logitech MouseMan (works under "BusMouse" in XFree86) on /dev/pms0
Western Digital 8013W C on ed0

    Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

                                                          Will Ferry

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