Robert Millan wrote:
Well, since X is a userland process, I wouldn't expect it to be able to crash the kernel, even if it plays with /dev/agpgart in a bad way. It can even be a security issue.
I'm not a X expert but the server contains many drivers that interact with the graphics hardware, i don't know if directly (bypassing the kernel) or by using some kernel interface (DRI?). But if something goes wrong in this area, a crash could happen.
Do you know if Linux had improvements in this area from 2.6.18 to 2.6.22 ?
Since the upgrade from i810 to intel driver, every kernel upgrade hasn't make any improvement for me (i'm using Sid). In my system is clearly a problem with the X driver. Now i'm still using the vesa driver, but i haven't tested the latest intel driver well (may be most problems are solved?), because the changelogs make me think that some crash problems still exists.
Happy to hear that vesa driver seems to have temporarily bypassed your crash problems.
Regards. Cesare.