The machine would occasionally stop responding completely. I got into the habit of leaving an open ssh session going from another box so I could try and poke around. The root drive was on a (very fast) usb 3.0 stick on an internal header on an add-in card.
There was a problem with the card or the driver as every so often something would go wrong and everything would stop responding again. The shell I left open revealed almost nothing as the root drive was gone, but it could be used to reboot the machine (thanks to the trick above), which would then be good again for another few days.
There was a problem with the card or the driver as every so often something would go wrong and everything would stop responding again. The shell I left open revealed almost nothing as the root drive was gone, but it could be used to reboot the machine (thanks to the trick above), which would then be good again for another few days.
I now have / on a proper SSD...