X Windows fatal IO error 14

[Mats Luthman]

Problem:

X11 Rev 3 installed on a Microvax 2000 sometimes emits this message:

'XIO: fatal IO error 14 (bad adress) on X server "UNIX: 0.0" after
47332 requests (47333 known processed) with 2 remaining events.'

It seems to happen when a window is opened or closed, and the program
that is involved dies. Sometimes all programs started under X dies,
and all windows disappear. The server is still alive but nothing can
be done (except moving the mouse cursor) since the window manager has
died too. It seems to happen after one or two hours of using a program
that opens and closes windows a great number of times. It has always
been the same program, a "tool" program that starts another program
with a command line interface. Exactly the same program works fine
on a Sun 3 with the same version of X. The number of requests is
different every time (the number of events can differ too).

I would be very grateful if somebody could give me a clue to what
causes this problem and what to do about it.