crash recovery

[tyler <tyler.smith@mail.mcgill.ca>]

Hi,

I just experienced a complete freeze of my laptop - amarok was stuck
looping through the same second of music from an online stream, and the
keyboard and mouse stopped responding completely. The screen appeared
fixed, viewing an xpdf window. I couldn't even switch to a terminal to
poke around there, as  C-A-F1 etc. didn't respond.

I'm running Lenny with fluxbox, and had just done an aptitude update. I
don't recall anything heavy, about 40 packages including iceweasel. I
had also just plugged in to the wall socket after running on battery
power for several hours.  

I have checked /var/log/Xorg0.log.old, and the only EE messages are:

(EE) Error compiling keymap (server-0)
(EE) XKB: Couldn't compile keymap

These show up periodically in this file, but not in /var/log/Xorg0.log,
which I take it is the log for my current session. I use a USB keyboard
and USB mouse sometimes, so maybe the error is when the keyboard is
first plugged in or removed?

I don't know where to begin trouble shooting - what's the first step? Is
there something I can do to make it easier to find the problem if it
happens again? I had similar problems in the past that I think were
associated with doing some image manipulation in Inkscape or Gimp that
were taking all of my RAM and CPU, but I wasn't doing anything like that
today. 

Thanks,

Tyler

-- 
I never loan my books, for people never return them. The only books remaining in
my library are those I’ve borrowed from others.
                                       --unknown