> **What's the best way to troubleshoot the stability of bitcoind?**

I would say logging.

> **The debug.log doesn't show anything particularly interesting.**

If you are not already running `bitcoind` with option `-debug=1`, I suggest you try it.


~~~
-debug=<category>

Output debugging information (default: -nodebug, supplying <category> is 
optional). If <category> is not supplied or if <category> = 1, output all 
debugging information. <category> can be: net, tor, mempool, http, bench, 
zmq, walletdb, rpc, estimatefee, addrman, selectcoins, reindex, cmpctblock, 
rand, prune, proxy, mempoolrej, libevent, coindb, qt, leveldb, validation.

~~~

Note that the default is `-nodebug`.

> **I've had it just stop for no discernable reason.**

As well as turning up debug to the max, I would try to capture the return code (`$?`) of `bitcoind`.


> **If i want to make sure my node is up... what's the best way to do that?**

The daemon process startup system on your Linux distro ought to be able to auto-restart a stopped daemon. You configure the startup system appropriately. Details probably depend in distro and version. E.g. in systemd: `restart=always`