/etc/cron.d/sysstat kills system with 2.4.17-rc2aa2 and 2.4.18-pre2aa2

[root]

Something strange is going on since last night.
I updated my kernel from 2.4.17-rc2aa1 to 2.4.18-pre2aa2 the day before
yesterday due to undecreasing swap size.   With the latter kernel, the 
machine stopped responding at 0:20AM when /etc/cron.d/sysstat is 
being activated by the cron daemon.  So, I decided to go back to 
2.4.17-rc2aa2 under the assumption that some bug has been introduced
in the mainline kernel.

Well. tonight at 0:30AM again, it died at the exact same point of time with 
2.4.17-rc2aa2.

I am now back to 2.4.17-rc2aa1, which has been working quite stably 
from 12/20, 2001 for about 20 days till the day before yesterday.

It is UP2000 with a single CPU on SuSE-7.1 with 2GB memory.

I saw an article with a message saying that his system dies at 4:00AM.
Is the symtom of his machine related to mine?

Thanks.

Best regards,

Hugh