Random crashes in FC6 on Core Duo

[zeno0771]

I'm completely stumped on this one, researched for weeks in forums and Bugzilla and can't find anything even close to this except someone running FC2.
I'm running FC6 on new-ish hardware (see my sig) and having a big problem. KDE apps segfault, other apps crash at random, sometimes X just crashes itself.
Most often, the crashes happen on a GUI event like clicking on a button or hovering the cursor over a link, but it's not necessary; a number of times they'll crash overnight.
Here's what I've done so far:
Ran memtest for 10+ hours, no errors.
Installed (and reinstalled) on both the same and a different partition, no difference.
Tried a different install disk, HTTP install, and local hard drive install, no difference.
Tried a different video card, no difference. Also switched between the Livna drivers, the proprietary nVidia drivers from their site, and the stock nv drivers. None made a difference.
Tried with updates and without, every kernel available for FC6 including 2.6.19-1.2895 in testing, no difference.
Tried completely different distros but that's not an accurate way to do things in this case since this hardware is new enough that many distros aren't ready to run on it yet and may have their own issues with it (in fact ironically enough Fedora is the most stable distro on this rig).
Tried different GUIs (I normally use KDE) and the only difference is that KDE apps don't segfault (that I've seen anyway); other apps (and X) will still crash.
After a reinstall, I've only updated one thing at a time (and sometimes nothing at all)...you guessed it, no difference.
Nothing out of the ordinary shows up in any of the usual logs except a recurring automount error in /var/log/messages:
Jan 16 13:41:53 destroyer automount[2800]: create_udp_client: hostname lookup failed: No such process
Jan 16 13:41:53 destroyer automount[2800]: create_tcp_client: hostname lookup failed: No such process
Jan 16 13:41:53 destroyer automount[2800]: lookup_mount: exports lookup failed for .directory
I've shut down everything unnecessary (bluetooth, IrDA etc) and I can't kill anything else without causing a trainwreck. There are no other operating systems installed on this or any orther disk with the exception of VMWare, which has never been an issue before; according to VMWare, the current 2.6.18...FC6 kernels are officially supported. I also know that others have had problems getting FC6 (or any other distro) to run on this CPU/board, but their problems have been limited to actually getting it to install, recognize IDE/SATA drives etc. I've already gotten around all of that.
If anyone has any ideas or further questions, let 'er rip; I'm all out of ideas on this one. Let me know whatever logs you want to see, whatever snapshots you want, anything. I depend on this machine for school and don't want Firefox or OpenOffice burping on me in the middle of a class or a term paper.
I also have this posted at LinuxQuestions.org so please don't refer me to my own post-

[alpha645]

Seems really severe, the only common thing I can think of is the kernel. Try to recompile it, if you can. There are howto's in this forum.

[zeno0771]

I'll have a go at that, can't make things much worse...
What I don't get though is the 2.6.19-1.2895 kernel was an rpm from the testing repo, and I know I'm not the only one running it, especially with this CPU/board combo (2.6.19 saves the trouble of having to patch an earlier kernel so lm_sensors will work).
Also, the problem persists regardless of which kernel I run (so far that's also been 2.6.18-1.2798, 2849, 2868, and 2869, and all Xen/PAE variations thereof). Like I said, I'll try recompiling anyway...worst that can happen is nothing, right?

[sej7278]

Originally Posted by zeno0771

according to VMWare, the current 2.6.18...FC6 kernels are officially supported.

I'd like to see where you got that quote from, as far as I know Fedora will NEVER be *officially* supported, especially as a host, despite a lot of the VM devs using it personally.

I can't help much, but can confirm that FC6 x86-64 works a charm on my Core2Duo, you're not running a Xen kernel are you - they seem to completely fsck things up.

I would try some LiveCD's and see if they crash.

[zeno0771]

Originally Posted by sej7278

I'd like to see where you got that quote from, as far as I know Fedora will NEVER be *officially* supported, especially as a host, despite a lot of the VM devs using it personally.

I can't help much, but can confirm that FC6 x86-64 works a charm on my Core2Duo, you're not running a Xen kernel are you - they seem to completely fsck things up.

I would try some LiveCD's and see if they crash.

Mea culpa; the VMWare thing isn't "official"...it was implied in another post elsewhere in reply to someone complaining about VMWare server not working specifically in a 2.6.19 kernel; the reply was simply, "Don't use unsupported kernels." It does work, with a quick & dirty workaround, but I digress...

Tried Xen, made no difference. Neither did PAE. Ready for this? Never occurred to me to run x86-64; heard a number of bad things happening there. I'll give that a shot next since my latest attempts to recompile 2.6.19 end with an internal compiler error (D'oh!)
As far as LiveCDs go, I get various issues from one distro to the next; never actually tried a Fedora liveCD . This board's IDE support is for $h!+ and that's what my optical drives are. I get anything from a clean boot (Kubuntu liveCD) to absolutely nothing (PCLinuxOS). Considering I had to add "all-generic-ide" to even get Fedora to install, I wouldn't expect great things from the liveCD.
Let's spin the wheel and see what x86-64 does, shall we? Any tips since I've never run 64 bit before would be greatly appreciated.

[alpha645]

Originally Posted by zeno0771

Mea culpa; the VMWare thing isn't "official"...it was implied in another post elsewhere in reply to someone complaining about VMWare server not working specifically in a 2.6.19 kernel; the reply was simply, "Don't use unsupported kernels." It does work, with a quick & dirty workaround, but I digress...

Tried Xen, made no difference. Neither did PAE. Ready for this? Never occurred to me to run x86-64; heard a number of bad things happening there. I'll give that a shot next since my latest attempts to recompile 2.6.19 end with an internal compiler error (D'oh!)
As far as LiveCDs go, I get various issues from one distro to the next; never actually tried a Fedora liveCD . This board's IDE support is for $h!+ and that's what my optical drives are. I get anything from a clean boot (Kubuntu liveCD) to absolutely nothing (PCLinuxOS). Considering I had to add "all-generic-ide" to even get Fedora to install, I wouldn't expect great things from the liveCD.
Let's spin the wheel and see what x86-64 does, shall we? Any tips since I've never run 64 bit before would be greatly appreciated.

Java doesn' t work on 64-bit. That's one of the major differences.

[zeno0771]

Originally Posted by alpha645

Java doesn' t work on 64-bit. That's one of the major differences.

Thanks for the heads-up.
D/L-ed X86-64 last night (the GA Tech mirror rocks btw) and here's what I've got so far:

-Instead of crashing I get an annoying freeze-unfreeze thing, but I have that narrowed down to the nVidia driver (would I use the EM64T or the IA64 for this? They don't have one in Livna for 2.6.19 yet that I know of). I run dual monitors so this is a must-have.

-Is there some sort of 32-to-64-bit migration howto somewhere (everything I've Googled refers to Windoze), or am I making this more complicated than this needs to be? I just lifted my Swiftfox directory from the i686 install and dropped it into my x86-64 install, and it fires right up.

-I get an HCID segfault (error 4) on the downstroke of a reboot; any idea what that's about?

I left a torrent going overnight and it didn't crash (Bittorrent was usually the first to go); so far so good. As long as I can stay away from any 64-bit-related PEBKAC errors I should be good to go but only time will tell I guess. Thanks tons for the help-