It happened again. This time I was able to write the last screen messages down: ------------- starting boot logger: bootlogd setting system clock activating swap (I don't have any swap) checking root file system ... fsck ... debian_root : clean ... (check in 3 mounts) done. ------------- After that, system gets stuck. Then I pressed alt+print+f to kill memory eating process which brought this: --------- [826,79] swap cache: add 0, delete 0, find 0/0 free swap= 0kb total=0kb 196592 pages of ram 0 pages of highmem [...] [826,79] out of memory: kill process 960 (rc) score 70 or a child [826,79] killed process 1749 (sh) /etc/init.d/rc : line 207: 1749 killed $debug $sh ”$script” $action setting the system clock cleaning up ifupdown .... loading kernel modules 828,86 loop: module loaded done starting early crypto disks ... privat: insecure mode for /etc/hda6key privat (starting) --------- Now it hangs again, so I wrote everything to paper and pressed alt+print+F again, wich led to: --------- [1366,24] SysRq: Manual OOM execution ---------- It still hangs, so I repeatet the above (alt+print+F) which always led to the same message from above. (SysRq: Manual OOM execution) Then I hit alt+print+l which brought up this: ---------- SysRq: Show backtrace of all active CPU's CPU 0: PID: 0, com: swapper Not tainted (2.6.26-1-686 #1) EIP: 0060: [<f082429a>] EFLAGS: 00000206 CPU: 0 EIP is at acpi_idle_enter_simple+0195/0x203 [processor] EAX: c03bf42c EBX: 00003b39 ECX: 00002c2c EDX: 01251000 ESI: 00000000 EDI: 00c7677a EBP: 00c72c41 ESP: c0379fc0 DS: 007b ES: 007b FS: 00df GS: 0000 SS: 006f CR0: 8005003b CR2: 0804dd70 CR3: 28459000 CR4: 000006d0 DR0: 00000000 DR1: 00000000 DR2: 00000000 DR3: 00000000 DR6: ffff0ff0 DR7: 00000400 [<c024990d>] ? cpuidle_idle_call + 0x5b/0x96 [<c02498b2>] ? cpuidle_idle_call + 0x0/0x86 [<c01025ce>] ? cpu_idle_ + 0xab/0xcb ================== ----------------- That was all. When hitting again alt+print+l it shows always very similar results, which differ only in some of the numbers. When I hit alt+print+c it said only: Crashdump triggered. But nothing happened. I have made a complete backup of my /var/log folder – right after the crash. If you want it, I could send it to you. I hope this helps you to find the bug.