On Wed, May 18, 2005 at 07:47:16AM +1000, Joel Reicher wrote:
> > # uptime
> >  4:24PM  up  1:20, 1 user, load averages: 0.C, 0.1N, 0.12
> > 
> > I get similar corruptions with w, top, and package version numbers
> > (which really throws off pkgsrc). Has anyone else seen this problem,
> > or know how to solve it?
[snip]
> Anyway, it was a hardware problem. Don't know what caused it though; I
> don't think the machine had been switched on for a while before I got
> to it. My guess was that something had happened to some silicon. I
> concluded this mainly because it was a fresh install, and I did an
> identical install on another machine which worked fine.

I saw this on a 5000/240 I've been running more-or-less nonstop since
1999, and I never quite narrowed down what it was, but it seemed to be
related to some subtle corruption of a self-compiled libc.  I remember I
could shift symlinks around in /usr/lib and make the problem dissapear
and reappear at will in a couple dynamically linked apps.

I never did figure out exactly what it was.

-- 
  Aaron J. Grier | "Not your ordinary poofy goof." | agrier@poofygoof.com