I was able to reproduce this on a new VM with the same hosting provider
(Ramnode), but in a different data center. Therefore, I conclude that it
is not a fault in the particular hardware the VMs are running on, but that
it could be a general problem with the hardware used by Ramnode or their
virtualization software.
Apologies for not mentioning the provider before. At the time, I didn't
see the need to advertise them, and it didn't seem likely to me that the
problem was particular to them.
The good news is that I now have a VM dedicated to reproducing this
problem, so if anyone would like access to help with investigation, please
let me know (and include your preferred username and ssh public key).
For what it's worth, I noticed that guile-rsvg was substituted from
ci.guix.gnu.org during the failed reconfigure.
Best,
Jack
