X server catching signal 8

["Robert M. Riches Jr." <richesr1 inetarena com>]

Why would an X server be catching signal 8 (and aborting) after
being idle for a while?  Does the -mieee switch need to be put
into the Makefiles at compile time?

I am seeing X servers abort from catching signal 8 after being
idle (with xlock running) for a while.  I'm not sure whether or
not it is deterministic.  I believe I started seeing this with RH
7.1 and the stock XFree86 4.0.3 servers with a TNT2 Vanta card.
I'm now seeing the same thing with RH 7.1, XFree86 4.2.0 compiled
from xfree86.org sources, and an Oxygen VX1 card.  All my
observations are on a UP2000 with one processor.  According to
/usr/include/asm/siginfo.h, both NSIGILL and NSIGFPE are defined
as 8, which means (if I interpret it correctly) this could be an
illegal opcode or floating point exception.

Other programs that are heavy on floating point (doing things
such as exp(x) when x < -690 or so) need a -mieee compile-time
switch to make them work without bombing.  The xlock program with
run-time option "-mode invert" is one example.

Could the X server need the -mieee compilation switch, too?

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Robert Riches
richesr1@inetarena.com