Hi, Looks like the problem is somehow related to hal. If I stop it (/etc/init.d/hal stop), the machine remains usable (some functionality probably lacking). Otherwise it 99% hangs after some minutes, typically during the post-processing phase of aptitude install. I managed to run aptitude safe-upgrade to squeeze. During the upgrade, hal (hald-addon storage) got restarted, and I had to stop it manually, which was quite painful but succeeded with ssh. Risto