I'm sorry to say this has now happened with kernel 2.6.21-rc5, too.
I started a kernel compilation in the evening and came back in the
morning to find all KDE decorations gone. All processes normally
running for a KDE session and labelled "[kinit]" in ps were gone
but everything else was running fine, and the system was still
usable via ssh. /var/log/kdm.log and /var/log/Xorg.0.log contained
nothing remotely suspicious. /var/log/messages had two lines I
never saw before:

Mar 31 02:27:36 gx110 kernel: [153577.891443] ReiserFS: hda3: warning: vs-8115: get_num_ver: not directory or indirect item
Mar 31 02:27:36 gx110 kernel: [153577.891559] ReiserFS: hda3: warning: vs-8115: get_num_ver: not directory or indirect item

But those didn't appear on previous occurrences of the "dying KDE"
problem so I guess they are not related.

This is SUSE LINUX 10.0 (i586) running on a Dell OptiPlex GX110
(Intel P3, 933 MHz, i810 chipset, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB ATA disk)
% uname -a
Linux gx110 2.6.21-rc5-noinitrd #1 PREEMPT Sat Mar 31 02:15:19 CEST 2007 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
% cat /proc/cmdline
root=/dev/hda3 selinux=0 x11i=vesa video=intelfb:mode=1280x1024-32@70 nmi_watchdog=2 lapic 5
Kernel configuration mostly-modular, based on standard SuSE kernel's
/proc/config.gz, just compiling into the kernel everything I need to
boot without an initrd and omitting some parts I'm not interested in.
(.config attached.) What else might be relevant?

Again, this is a Heisenbug, ie. it's not reproducible and invariably
happens when I'm away from the machine. (Probably Murphy at work.)
It's pretty rare: I have seen it four times on 2.6.21-rc3-mm2 and
once on 2.6.21-rc5, on a machine which spends about equal amounts
of time running the latest stable, rc, and mm kernels. OTOH, so far
it hasn't ever happened with any 2.6.20 or earlier kernel. Nor have
I seen it with 2.6.21-rc[1-4] or 2.6.21-rc4-mm* - but for the -rc4
and -rc4-mm releases that's not conclusive as those have only been
running for a very short time.

HTH
T.

-- 
Tilman Schmidt                          E-Mail: tilman@imap.cc
Bonn, Germany
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