May be its time to do sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade for your Ubuntu?
I have newest Xubuntu version, man. Fully updated.
Have you restarted your Ubuntu to see if bitcoind and the P2Pool server startup again?
I just restarted p2pool. It's running fine so far on
http://lenny.dnsd.me:9332/static/Will see how it goes.
You know it's funny what you experienced just happened to me 2 minutes ago. I am using openSUSE, I restarted my pool and everything is normal again, it looks like there might be a bug in P2Pool. I wish there was a system that could stop the server and restart it when it errors out like this.
My status if anyone cares can be found at
http://p2pool.smoothrunnings.ca:9332/