There are a lot of posts on this, but I haven't found an answer yet.
This happens to me very occasionally, I'd say every two months or so, on a machine that boots automatically ~ 2x/day (it's a MythTV backend server, and that's all it does). I don't have a crash log/dump or anything at the moment (but I'll try to find one next time it does it).
It has nVidia graphics hardware (open source driver), onboard ethernet (used to connect HD Homerun DVB tuners), and a TP-Link wireless PCI card (also open source inbuilt driver). Originally is was on kernel 3.16, though cannot recall what it has moved on to now (panic hasn't changed, though). Extended memtest shows no errors. It only ever crashes on boot, once running, it has never crashed.
If/when it does this I just shut it down (with power button) then reboot, it is fine again - for another couple of months.
Since it is so occasional I wonder if it might be connected with occasional boot up scheduled drive tests, but I have no evidence that it is.
Whilst obviously finding the reason is the best approach, my real question at the moment is whether there any way of getting it to automatically reboot (at least once) if/when this happens (since a reboot solves it)?
