I would say: Or it could be a power failure.
Because of a crappy electrical environment I live in I have had a fair number
of those and from your very brief explanation it sounds that that could be
possible.
I have an uptime of 20h of 2.0.3 on a not too heavily loaded machine, but
still running X and doing compiles of all sorts all the time (486, 24MB RAM).
FWIWW,
Peter
--
main(){char*s="O_>>^PQAHBbPQAHBbPOOH^^PAAHBJPAAHBbPA_H>BB";int i,j,k,l,m,n;
for(j=0;j<7;j++)for(l=0;m=l-6+j,i=m/6,n=j*6+i,k=1<<m%6,l<41-j;l++)
putchar(l<6-j?' ':l==40-j?'\n':k&&s[n]&k?'*':' ');}