I had an issue where the beagleboard would kernel panic after a cold boot, yet if I hit the reset button it would boot up OK.

Thanks to the helpful people over on the Beagle Board Google Groups page, a solution was quickly provided – upgrade the u-boot image in the NAND.

http://elinux.org/BeagleBoardUbuntu#Upgrade_U-Boot

I followed those instructions to the letter and it’s been fine ever since.