Well, after yet another ordeal we're back up, temporarily at least. The intermittant problems that have been plauging this box lately may be due to either a buggy or slightly incompatible motherboard. The entire box has been temporarily replaced by the good graces of my friend Neil who lent his home system for me to use until the matter of the "real" ufies.org box is fixed (or until he goes stir crazy from lack of computer and steals my home system).
The upgrade did not happen because of the hardware problems we found (detailed here
The box is slightly slower and has slightly less drive space (any users logging in will note that /home is pretty full right now :) so if you have large backups or files in your home directory that you can afford to lose I'd appreciate if everyone can do a bit of cleaning.
Much thanks, stay tuned, and appreciate the patience.