mouse and keyboard lockup w/ RedHat 8.0

[Larry Cook]

I could use some pointers on diagnosing an intermittent lockup problem I am 
having with RedHat 8.0.  I originally thought it was caused by the umax-pp 
backend I am using with XSane, but the last two times my scanner was never 
powered on.  The last time it happened it finally occurred to me that I should 
try to telnet in to see if the whole system was hung.  The telnet was 
successful so I did "shutdown now".  My telnet session got dropped but the 
system never fully shutdown.  So now I'm wondering if it's an XFree86 problem, 
although I wouldn't expect that to prevent the system from shutting down.

Just some simple pointers to get me started would be great.  Maybe along the 
lines of:

1) What logs should I check for errors?

2) What is the best way to restart XFree86?

3) Any processes or kernel stuff I should check?

4) Or anything else that would help me narrow down the cause?

Thanks,
Larry