Strange kernel panics

I don’t remember when it started, but every now and then when I got back at the computer after leaving it on for several hours, the keyboard-leds would blink and the computer would not respond to anything – in other words a kernel panic. The problem was nothing got written to any logfiles, so debugging this didn’t seem trivial. After reading a bit around, I decided to try adding noapic to the kernel parameters (this disables APIC). This was a few weeks ago and it hasn’t happened since. Apparently the problem is well-known, but notoriously difficult to fix properly since adding “noapic” is much easier for users, and it Just Works.