Comment # 33 on bug 1160995 from GCC Da DiscoveryTechnologies

(In reply to Thorsten Kukuk from comment #32)
> No NIS at all! If it cannot be solved before, then NIS is needed to solve it
> via NIS, which means a nice recursion.
> 
> > # grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf
> > hosts:          files nis mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns
> > 
> > All NIS servers are defined in /etc/hosts , so they should be resolved from
> > there.
> 
> Most likely the solver tries some variants or one variant (e.g. FQDN vs
> short name) is missing, and you have your recursion.
> This is not a good and robust idea.

I thoroughly took care to include all possible name variants in the local
/etc/hosts .

Nevertheless, I adhered to your advice:

1. Replaced NIS server names by their IP addresses in /etc/yp.conf
2. Removed 'nis' from the hosts line in  /etc/nsswitch.conf

Then I rebooted the machine.
I had the affected user working on the test system the whole day yesterday. And
she could not manage to crash  kscreenlocker_greet  again!

So I believe that you are right and our configuration was involved into the
crashes. I will update the configuration on all our systems with the new
learnings.

Thanks for your input, Thorsten!