I'm sure there is a way- but being command line novice etc I've been using SuSe 9.1 out of the box [so to speak].
However, certain software[s] crash and nothing appears in the xconsole to indicate why so I'm thinking there must be a reason.
Is the software unstable ; well in the case of Opera for example - not really- I use it on my win98 machine and it never crashes- yet in Suse it does once a day- even with upgrades [paid mode]
Same with Abiword
Even gedit crashes at least once a week.

So is this the nature of SuSe?
The nature of Linux [if so why talk about win*&^*&^^% crashing all the time since the behavior seems the same]?

And mostly how do I tell where the problem lie? Without that There seems to be no direction to go to fix it.

Thanks

BTW- I'm committed to making this work- I've stuck with Linux as an ignoramous for over a year now so this is not a slam linux or SuSe query.

Jay

The /var directory is where log files are maintained. You'd most likely want to inspect /var/log, look for files called 'messages, localmessages, etc' which you can read. You can use any text editor, or, from the command line, use the 'cat' command, as in: cat /var/log/messages | less. Piping the command through less will allow you to see one screenfull at a time, and you can navigate forward and backward. It will be a long file unless you are doing regular cleanup of log files.
You may also want to inspect /var/mail. When errors occur, the system sends mail to either the user who is logged in, or to the sysadmin (root). You should be able to read the mail to user, but to read the mail for root, you may have to su to root (the command is 'su', then you will be prompted for the root password). Then you can do the cat command to read the mail to root.

Thanks for your reply- however what am I looking for?
I went into the root console, and got to the var/messages and piped it and my god there is allot of ancient history there [how does one delete this extra stuff *and* is it safe to delete the 'other' message files, messageslocal and a couple of other types?]

But even on the day that I know what went on I am having trouble recognizing a *problem* I expected some kind of 'failure' note but mostly I see failures where I think I may have canceled an action.

So I need a bit more information. So far so good and I'm glad for it.
Thank you
Jay