I've seen something similar, when running with a 2.6.0test11
kernel. I
got an I/O error writing the ext3 journal, and after that my root
filesystem was mounted read only, which had a similar effect to what you
saw. I never saw this happen with another kernel version, though.
Just for information, I'm using the 2.4.22-1.2115.nptl kernel.
--
Julien Olivier <julo(a)altern.org>