5.1-CURRENT rebooting (multile systems) -- How to troubleshoot?

Hi.  This is the third time I've tried to write this Email.  Things keep 
failing out from under me.
This did not happen before I cvsuped Oct 14 to get around the -pthread 
problem with ports.

Either my server (I NFS mount /home from the server machine) or the 
desktop machine have failed unpredictably multiple times.  Sometimes 
under load, sometimes it appears they fail overnight when only 
setiathome is running on them.  They are dual processor Athlon machines.

I have not seen any messages from any of these failures.  I have seen 
one failure on the server that indiated a page fault in kernel mode.  I 
didn't write all of the information down because I thought it would be 
logged in one of the logs.  Wrong again idiot!!

I do not have any doc on these and generic searches didn't turn up 
anything I can hang my hat on.

My question is, if the system fails (I'm assuming these are panics) how 
do I get the machine to NOT automatically reboot so I can copy down the 
failure information?  (Unless these are logged somewhere I have not 
found yet.)
I'm frustrated because I cannot get any information on the failures to 
even begin to formulate a sane posting to the list.
Sorry for the rambling posting.  I'm venting a little.  I'm used to 
fixing mainframe system software.  I am still trying to learn the skills 
on my own for FreeBSD.

TIA for any help.