Ahhh but in 2005, it was running FC1 with a 2.4 kernel (I believe). So, the issue may very well not have been present 3 years ago...

But there are several hundred other reported crashes at precisely that moment... still a coincidence? I would bet NOT.

Well given that there have been reports of several hundred such crashes, I guess it can't be a coincidence unless there are a billion or so Linux servers ;)

I only said that the last log was 20 seconds before midnight and that based on my clock display, it crashed no later than 00:00:00. I would bet any amount of money that the actual crash was at the 00:00:00 GMT changeover.

But there have now been reports (just adding up the comments posted on slashdot and emails to me) of hundreds of machines going down at precisely 00:00:00 GMT (across multiple timezones). That combined set of data points plus the obvious potential issue of a leap second being introduces at that precise time would seem to make your coincidence theory astronomically unlikely.

As the OP and having read about several hundred other stable machines in multiple timezones crashing at that precise second, I do not believe that is a coincidence. Several people have reported 10 or more machines crashing at precisely 00:00:00 GMT -- it is so unlikely that hundreds of stable servers crashed precisely at this moment, that I would bet anything that this is NOT a coincidence. Plus, the last time my machine encountered a leap second, it was running FC1 with a very different kernel so that does not prove anything.

Except that based on the responders that there were hundreds of such crashes at exactly that time (GMT) -- including people who had 10 or more servers crash at exactly that moment.

I am running: 2.6.26.6-49.fc8

Hardware is ASUS P4PE. 2 1-TB Seagate SATA hardrives, 1 200MB PATA drive. 2GB DDR. 1 pchdtv5500 card, 1 winfast 2000XP tv card, 1 nVidia 6200 graphics card. Checked syslog, cron, maillog, mythbackend.log, wtmp,

Sorry - I was trying to keep the post short. Not a hardware failure in that it booted right up when I noticed it the next morning. No kernel panics or any other evidence of why it crashed.

Interesting, I run mythtv too but wasn't recording at the time of the crash. Has been stable since I rebooted a couple of hours ago.

I agree - but seems like an awfully unlikely coincidence. By my math, chance of a crash in any given 20 second period is just under 1 in 5 million: (2 crashes in 2237 days)/(2237*24*60*60 seconds) * (20 second interval). Seems suspicious to me...

I rebooted it and it went just fine. I looked at the logs and saw now errors. Last entry was in /var/log/maillog at 18:59:40 (not an error). So, not sure how to figure it out - tempted to try to replicate though by setting time back to 18:59 on 12/31/08 (and shutting off ntpd)

Froze - couldn't ping or ssh or get console response. I know the time cuz last maillog entry was 18:59:40 and the clock (on my emacs session) said 18:59 at time of crash. Hardware is: ASUS P4P Rebooted without ever but required me to manually poweroff