[Nottingham] Strange random reboot problem with Mandriva 2006

[Peter Aldred]

<resend - I think I sent it first from the wrong address, apologies if two 
copies arrive>

Hi all,

I've been trying out the new MDV and while most things have gone amazingly 
smoothly I've got a weird problem with random reboots of the machine.	

I say random, but they're not strictly random - so far they've only occurred 
when I've been away from the machine. They seem oddly timed as well; once it 
happened about 2 minutes after I left (I was away for 5 minutes and it was 
back up by the time I got back), once it happened about 40 minutes after (or 
at least 50 mins was the last reboot, it may have occurred more than once - I 
was away for an hour and when I got back w showed uptime as 10 mins). Other 
times it's been happy for a couple of hours at a time.

My first thought was a power-saving mode problem causing a hang, but I think 
I've switched it all off, both in KDE and Mandriva Control. I haven't checked 
the BIOS yet, that's my next step. 

Trying to be cunning I set up a console to tail /var/log/messages to a text 
file, so I'd know when it went down by the time sig and what the last 
messages were - they're reproduced below, and seem to indicate an error with 
kdm, but I don't understand any more than that!

Anyone have any ideas?

Here is the last log (starting from when I closed the MCC and left the PC):

=====================
Oct 16 21:45:50 peter drakconf.real[6094]: modified file /etc/mcc.conf
Oct 16 21:45:50 peter su(pam_unix)[6088]: session closed for user root
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'GreeterPosFixed' in 
section [X-*-Greeter] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:39
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'GreeterPosX' in 
section [X-*-Greeter] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:40
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'GreeterPosY' in 
section [X-*-Greeter] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:41
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'ServerVT' in section 
[X-:1-Core] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:80
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'ServerVT' in section 
[X-:2-Core] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:83
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'ServerVT' in section 
[X-:3-Core] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:86
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'ServerVT' in section 
[X-:4-Core] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:89
Oct 16 21:46:53 peter kdm_config[6118]: Unrecognized key 'ServerVT' in section 
[X-:5-Core] at /usr/share/config/kdm/kdmrc:92
=====================

And that's where the file ends, so it seems there were no further messages 
between that last one and the reboot, which happened within the next few 
minutes.

Thanks in advance for any help!
-- 
Peter Aldred
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