-current hangs; serial console oddities

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

Am I alone in noticing strange stalls and peculiar serial console behavior
in -current?  The problem is at least as old as version 5.99.01.

I just booted my test machine, a Soekris net4521, and the boot messages
stopped here:

Starting cron.
Fri Dec  5 11:25:32 CST 2008

NetBSD/i386 (

I tapped enter a few times, and a login prompt did appear---I
typed my login and Enter, and waited:

NetBSD/i386 (cuw) (console)

login: root

Finally, the Password: prompt appeared.  I typed my password and Enter.
I waited, and the watchdog reset the machine.

Sometimes I can log in, but the system behaves very strangely.  Sometimes,
/bin/sh will print a new prompt (#) if I strike Enter, but no command
characters are displayed.  If I type a command, and Enter, it takes a
while for the command prompt to return, but it appears that the command
did not run: for example, I may type 'ifconfig sip0', the expected output
does *not* appear, but I am returned to the prompt.

It seems that I cannot stop programs or interrupt them with ^Z or ^C.
For example, I started 'vmstat 5' last night, and it merrily ran all
night long, but it did not respond to ^Z or ^C.

Any ideas?

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung%ojctech.com@localhost      Urbana, IL * (217) 278-3933 ext 24