beware of HEAT!
 

well i posted a thread earlier about my compiling the kernel and it failing due to segfaulting and the error ''illegal instruction''. But now, i've solved it -- and i think that others here might be a bit helped by knowing this.
See, my computer's fairly old and it's got some rattly old fans in it, but I had never found that to be a problem before while running win98. It's also got an extra hard drive in it, which means another random flat IDE cable. These two facts combined with the large amount of processing power for long times required to compile something leads directly to:
HEAT.
I wasn't too sure of this myself but i was making gqview and kept getting errors. However, as long as i kept typing in 'make' it would 'work through' the errors (the CPU would have time to cool to the ambient air). Then, I opened the case and pointed a desk fan at it (at about a foot's distance in case the magnetism would be an issue). PROBLEM SOLVED!
I was able to compile the kernel without a SINGLE SEGFAULT!
So people, if your computer seems to be dying under load, just think that it could be heat. So before you curse someone out that they've written such ugly code or somesuch, check that it's not on your end...

-r4v5
(not quite sure whether to post this in software or hardware or the slackware forum :)

Good advice!
 

A couple of years ago I kept getting segfaults (sig 11, I think) while compiling a kernel and discovered a bunch of crud packed into the fins of the heaqtsink under my cpu fan. Patience and strong toothpicks took care of the problem.