"Steven M. Klass" wrote:

<snip>
> So I logged in and began working.  All of the sudden <no warning> reset.
> Like someone pushed the reset button.  Fortunately (or so I think) I have
> reiserfs, which seems to be coping (at least better than me) with this
> irritation.  This happend 4 times last night.
> 
> So now how do I begin to troubleshoot this?  I haven't touched my OS in a
> while (>week) and I use it daily.  If this is a hardware problem how do I
> find it?  It's not an obvious fault (like a dead harddrive).  Then look at
> the time for the reboot?  The time certainly seems suspicious - like a cron
> job.  But I don't know of a "hard reset" ability with a computer..    Any
> ideas are welcome.

This is a total guess but your description of a hard boot initiated by a
force outside the OS seems to fit with this "feature".

Several years ago the company I was working for got us new machines, I
believe they were Compaq.   For some reason I was mucking with the BIOS
settings and noticed these new machines had a setting for automatic
reboot every so many days.  You see, these new machines shipped with
Windows NT preinstalled.  I guess that Compaq, having worked with
Windows NT before, assumed they would need a regular reboot.

If your system has this "feature" I don't know how it would have gotten
set without you doing it but I thought I would throw it out there.

Dan