We are seeing processes get permanently stuck in disk waits on currents from
the last week or so on i386.

We can repeatedly get pax to hang like this during an install using boot 
floppies from a release built from feb 9 sources or from todays source.  Also
seeing it (but less easy to repeat) on systems actually running currents from
those two dates.

A ps of a process currently in that state is below.

sunshine# ps -laxww | grep pax
  0 299  288   0  -5   0   456   364 biowait  D+   p1  0:00.49 pax -zrvpe -f /mnt/scratch/games.tgz

This was not happening with systems built from sources from about feb 4 so
presumably its something that changed between the 4th and the 9th.  Any ideas?

cheers
mark