That said, I think it was transitory. I built a kernel remotely today, and
rebooted the machine. I'd previously been running a very recent 1.3K, I
believe. Being daring, after the kernel built I rebooted the machine. It
came back up. Then I did a "make build" and let that trundle along while
I drove home. (I had a distraction which unexpectedly but pleasantly sucked
away seven more hours.)

On finally getting home, I rebooted, since the build had long since finished.
I got a panic:

multiply freed item 0xf04bb000
panic: free: duplicated free

This is hand-written, so it may contain errors. Anyway, the thing panicked,
and I was unable to cleanly reboot. However, it came back up fine, and then
rebooted fine once again after that.

My completely random guess is that there was something funkily incompatible
between my 1.4_ALPHA kernel and my 1.3K userland, or at least that part of
the 1.3K userland that persisted in memory since before the build.

If this helps, the panic occurred right after named printed its exit stats.

If there's anything I can do to help pin this down, if it needs to be pinned
down, just ask.

-- 
Mason Loring Bliss             ((  "In the drowsy dark cave of the mind dreams
mason@acheron.middleboro.ma.us  ))  build  their nest  with fragments  dropped
http://acheron.ne.mediaone.net ((   from day's caravan." - Rabindranath Tagore