Thrashing and OOM during upgrade from 10.04 to Maverick

My symptoms are very similar to bug 458299, which is presently considered fixed.

During the upgrade from 10.04 to Maverick on 5 July, my system slowed to a crawl, thrashing so severely that I couldn't even move the mouse or ssh in. I waited for it to pass, rather than risking interrupting the process, but after hours of thrashing, the kernel killed first Chromium, then the Maverick upgrader. This left me with an incomplete upgrade which had to be manually recovered.

It's hard to confirm exactly when this occurred, because I couldn't do anything on the system at the time, but the last thing in the upgrader's term.log is:

Setting up evince-common (2.30.3-0ubuntu2) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/apparmor.d/abstractions/evince ...

and this lines up with the OOM messages in dmesg (attached).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: linux-image-2.6.35-6-generic 2.6.35-6.9
Regression: No
Reproducible: No
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-6.9-generic 2.6.35-rc3
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-6-generic x86_64
AlsaVersion: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Driver Version 1.0.23.
Architecture: amd64
AudioDevicesInUse:
 USER PID ACCESS COMMAND
 /dev/snd/controlC0: mdz 2694 F.... pulseaudio
 /dev/snd/controlC1: mdz 2694 F.... pulseaudio
Card0.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:0 'Intel'/'HDA Intel at 0xfe020000 irq 49'
   Mixer name : 'Analog Devices AD1984'
   Components : 'HDA:11d41984,17aa20bb,00100400'
   Controls : 32
   Simple ctrls : 20
Card1.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:1 'Q9000'/'Logitech, Inc. QuickCam Pro 9000 at usb-0000:00:1a.7-3, high speed'
   Mixer name : 'USB Mixer'
   Components : 'USB046d:0990'
   Controls : 2
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card1.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
   Capabilities: cvolume cvolume-joined cswitch cswitch-joined penum
   Capture channels: Mono
   Limits: Capture 0 - 3072
   Mono: Capture 0 [0%] [18.00dB] [off]
Card29.Amixer.info:
 Card hw:29 'ThinkPadEC'/'ThinkPad Console Audio Control at EC reg 0x30, fw 7KHT24WW-1.08'
   Mixer name : 'ThinkPad EC 7KHT24WW-1.08'
   Components : ''
   Controls : 1
   Simple ctrls : 1
Card29.Amixer.values:
 Simple mixer control 'Console',0
   Capabilities: pswitch pswitch-joined penum
   Playback channels: Mono
   Mono: Playback [on]
Date: Tue Jul 6 14:12:37 2010
Frequency: Once every few months.
HibernationDevice: RESUME=UUID=bc555036-0252-42e8-804b-b34dc22bbcd4
MachineType: LENOVO 6465CTO
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-6-generic root=UUID=305dde78-d20a-4248-aaf4-09447b7c5791 ro quiet splash
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
RelatedPackageVersions: linux-firmware 1.37
SourcePackage: linux
WpaSupplicantLog:

dmi.bios.date: 01/21/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 7LETB0WW (2.10 )
dmi.board.name: 6465CTO
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr7LETB0WW(2.10):bd01/21/2008:svnLENOVO:pn6465CTO:pvrThinkPadT61:rvnLENOVO:rn6465CTO:rvrNotAvailable:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 6465CTO
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad T61
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO