Hello, Guenther Of couse I have updated kernel, userspace and packages at the same time, like I always do. I do niot have any tmpfs mount at this conputer. I've also noticed that when I reboot the system from hang (I am forced to do that with reset) fsck unlinking many, many files, so I believe your thought about inode starvation is correct.
Hope that helps somehow. -- With best regards. Gregory