Description of Problem:

An older machine with a K6 processor and 2.4.9-0.20.2 installed
died quietly last nigth without leaving any traces in log files.
Outwardly nothing was amiss only neither keyboard nor mouse were
responsive and a machine was also not accessible over a network
(save 'ping').  No traces of a crash of any sort in log files
after a reboot.  Manual rerunning /etc/cron.daily/slocate script
finished without any incidents.

Comparing time stamps on various log files indicates that a machine
died running 'slocate' job from cron.  Another box (Athlon) with
2.4.9-0.20.2 survived the same night so far.  On a kernel level
differences are that Athlon is running "athlon" variant and the
one which died is "i386".

Here is an output from /proc/cpuinfo:
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
cpu family	: 5
model		: 6
model name	: AMD-K6tm w/ multimedia extensions
stepping	: 2
cpu MHz		: 233.866
cache size	: 64 KB
fdiv_bug	: no
hlt_bug		: no
f00f_bug	: no
coma_bug	: no
fpu		: yes
fpu_exception	: yes
cpuid level	: 1
wp		: yes
flags		: fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 mmx
bogomips	: 466.94

This box has 64 MB of a physical memory and over 160 MB of swap.