partial hang - can ssh in, ps aux hangs part way through

[Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net>]

It's this laptop though, so I had to reboot, cannot perform any more tests.

I tried the following, all to no avail:
ps aux
top
(each of those hung part way through the first iteration)

killall /usr/bin/X
killall xinit
sudo telinit 1