I've got a Debian box sitting here acting as a server, but I've been having trouble with it randomly "freezing" (sometimes it'll go for days without problems, sometimes it's once an hour), or at least it stops responding to network connections and when I try to hook up a monitor and keyboard I get no response from it.

Anyway, just now I happened to have a monitor and keyboard hooked up to it, trying to reproduce the problem. I couldn't do it, and got up to unplug the keyboard. When I looked back at the monitor I saw this message:

ohci_hcd 0000:00:0f.1: HC died; cleaning up

and the machine stopped responding. Could this have something to do with the random freezing problem? What's going on? How do I fix it?

Sounds like Ram.

May also be bad power supply damaging parts like hard drives and this is the symptom.

Good Day

I suggest a full backup asap, i have seen the same error when Hardware failed...on my server it was a disk.

The ohci_hcd is a USB module so it might have something to do with your Motherboard, or a USB device attached to the PC.
If the Keyboard was a USB keyboard then you unplugging it caused the error

Cheers

I second the dying motherboard suspicion. Well, that or a buggy usb driver.

Do you have to hard reset it when it stops responding or does it come back alive afterwards?

Regardless, back up your data or swap the motherboard ASAP.

-- Shade

I ran MemTest86 and it didn't find anything wrong with the RAM.

I've never gotten the machine to come back once it stops responding. I always have to hit the reset button.

I guess it might be the MB, which is too bad because this is the first time I decided to go with an Asus board (they're supposed to be the best, right?).

I be thinking the USB controller (on-board ???) - and USB 1.1 at that.
If it's on-board, try disabling it in the BIOS - if PCI try moving it to another slot. Better yet go get another one - but make it USB 2.

Disabling the USB controller (it's on-board) doesn't seem to work. It still stopped responding a few minutes of running after I disabled it in the BIOS.

Hi

Well if disabling the USB doesnt help then it is the Motherboard, get it swopped out for a new one, the continually resetting is eventually going to stuff up the OS and data

Cheers