Hello!

I am running NetBSD v1.4.1 on a Quadra 840av with a 3GB HD and 80 MB of
RAM.

I am experiencing random crashes on the machine.  What happens is that all
the high level functions seem to be dead (telnet, ssh, http, etc) but the
low level stuff still works (ipnat, ping, etc).  I have xdm running on the
console and it will not respond to keyboard input to redraw itself after
its gone to the blank screen.

The system logs dont report anything at all and I am baffled as to what is
causing them.  I used to be running on a Quadra 610 (transplanted the hard
drive straght from the Q610 to the Q840av), and the only things that have
changed since that stable system is switching to a Quadra 840av and
running dump in cron to a tape which is on a sparc-10 using rcmd/rsh, as
well as running ntpdate more often to keep the clock in synch.

Has anyone seen anything like this? 

Things that it *might* be is maybe bad memory, or maybe the combination of
dump to the solaris box (2.7) is causing some sort of problem, but it all
seems rather odd...

The machine is heavly used (often > 8-10 users on at once).

These crashes seem to happen maybe once every week or 2.

They initally seemed to occure at like the 1am-2am area but the recent
once have been at other times so that somewhat lessions the chances of it
being something in crontab...

Anyone have any suggestions of what I might do when it crashes to try to
diagnose this problem and figure out whats causing it?

Feel free to ask for more details about the system if you need them!

Thanks in advance!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marek Kozubal                      marek@portents.com
Portents, LLC     www.portents.com http://www.portents.com/marek/
Personal Satellite Tracking System www.merlin.com / www.skyshow.com

            "What makes the universe so hard to understand is that
                    we have nothing to compare it to."