Hard Lockups can't happen (can they?)

[Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk>]

My computer is crashing in a really strange way.

Most of the time it works perfectly (running a debian sid, with kde 3.4 from 
experimental).

Yesterday, in order to create some more disk space, I bought a new disk and 
installed it as "slave" on the second IDE channel (next to the DVD/CDRW drive 
as "master" on this channel), this giving me /dev/hdd.

At the same time, I did my normal (every few days) aptitude "u" followed by 
"g" (in otherwords updated all the packages to the latest).

Now, provided I don't touch konqueror to do any web browsing (using Firefox is 
fine), the computer runs fine.  However, normally within a few seconds of 
firing up konquerer to do web browsing, my system locks solid.

When I say solid, I mean solid.  Mouse stops moving is the first symptom, but 
in actual fact everything on the user interface stops.  Not only that, but 
the computer no longer responds to pings from outside. So it appears to have 
come to a complete halt.

If I fire up konqueror to locally browse files there is not problem.

I though linux was supposed to protect against rogue userland software, so how 
is just running konqueror having such a devastating effect?

Obviously nothing appears in the logs, as the last few writes to disk are 
lost, so has anyone any ideas about how to debug this?

I have reported this as bug number 301552. 


-- 
Alan Chandler
alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you,
 then they fight you, then you win. --Gandhi