lock-up with thrashing

[Michael Soulier <msoulier@storm.ca>]

	So, I get home from finally seeing the X-Men movie (I truly
expected them to hack it up horribly, but I was impressed...) to find my
Debian box thrashing away like crazy. The mouse would barely respond, and
a ctrl-alt-backspace only partially shut down X. It just sort of hung
while the system went nuts, the harddrive sounding like it was about to
blow its way out the side of the tower. I waited and waited, but it didn't
give me a prompt, so I finally hit the reset. 
	It came back up fine, and all is well now, but looking in the
various logs, I can't tell what it was doing when this occurred. If
someone can give me a hint of what to look for and where, I'd love to
track this down to prevent it happening again. 

	Thanks guys,

	Mike

"To listen to the words of the learned, and to instill into others the
lessons of science, is better than religious exercises."
		-- Prophet Muhammad (pbuh)