This is Ubuntu 12.04LTS running the latest Linode kernel.

My /etc/fstab is as follows:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc        /proc        proc    defaults                       0 0
/dev/xvda   /            ext3    noatime,errors=remount-ro      0 1
/dev/xvdb   none         swap    sw                             0 0
/dev/xvdc   /home        ext3    defaults                       0 2

The problem is that intermittently the mount of /dev/xvdc on /home fails. Here's the startup script output when that happens:

fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
/dev/xvda: clean, 65383/5690496 files, 1438641/5701632 blocks
mountall: Disconnected from Plymouth
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
fsck.ext3: Device or resource busy while trying to open /dev/xvdc
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?
mountall: fsck /home [2041] terminated with status 8
mountall: Unrecoverable fsck error: /home
mountall: Skipping mounting /home since Plymouth is not available

Any ideas what could be going on?

Hi,

I have a similar issue. Did you finally solve the issue? How?

I was unable to solve it .

I just switched back to having /home be a directory on the root partition rather than a separate partition.

Did you by any chance have munin installed?

No. Munin was not and is not installed.