Easily reproducible, X will crash randomly within minutes of use. Never had X crash with 3.3 server.
Try disabling DRI. If that doesn't fix it, try the latest release in RAWHIDE, and let me know if it works for you. There is new mga patch in the rawhide version.
We (Red Hat) should really try to resolve this before next release.
Removing DRI now just makes X exit cleanly when I try and start something like Konqueror from GNOME, rather than taking the console with it. Will try the rawhide RPM of XFree-4. Firing up rsync now...
Rawhide RPM XFree86-4.0.2-7 did not fix the problem. ltracing the X server I can see a SIGSEGV being received. I will rebuild the RPM with -g and fix soon.
Ok. One of the bugs I am seeing seems to be in: /xc/programs/Xserver/render/glyph.c function ResizeGlyphHash line oldSize = hash->hashSet->size; (assuming I got all the debugging stuff correct). I think there may also be another bug which causes the machine to hang when DRI is enabled.. I will attempt to fix the code later if I have time.. so much other stuff to do in the meantime...
I have installed XFree86 and xfs from wolverine onto my fisher install. X is still really *really* unstable. Reproducible crash by starting konqueror while in GNOME, and reproducible random crashes within minutes of use of something like mozilla. I suppose I will have to spend some time debugging the code once I receive the SRPMS in the mail...(being on a 28.8k link is not fun)
Does the XFree86-3.3.6 server work for you OK?
This is fixed as of Xconfigurator-4.9.12-1, by using the 3.3.6 server for older MGA cards.
The 3.3.6 X server fixes the reproducible crash with Konqueror but does not stop the reproducible random crashes.
Dave: Can you heavily exercise a Millenium card and see if you can locally reproduce?
While running a Matrox g450 X will actually crash and reboot the machine. I switched to a Matrox g400 and X just crashes without rebooting the machine X also crashes with a G200
Can you try disabling the Render extension in your config, and see if that makes the problem go away? You'll also have to disable anti-aliased fonts in KDE if using them. If that makes it go away, it will help lead to a quicker solution.
I have never seen XFree86-4.0.3-[>5] random crashes on g200 and g400 (with or without DRI or anti-aliased fonts). I always use 16 bpp color depth at a reasonable resolution of 1280x1024. I do keep videoBIOS updated with recent version from Matrox. I have to admit that some of them were bad. The one (2.04) before the last one (2.07) caused WinNT freezes under opengl screensavers for example. So, I would strongly advise updating videoBIOS too - there must be a reason for Matrox to keep tweaking videoBIOSes. I saw non-random crashes, however. For example, X crashes when NIS and NFS serving my account is dead for a while while I'm logged in. Another type of reproducible crash is described in bug 36682.
Is this problem still present in rawhide?
Closing bug assuming it is fixed in XFree86 4.2.0 in Red Hat Linux 7.3 If the problem does persist however, please reopen the report.