>Has anybody else seen this?

Yep.  :)

>Going to multi-user, /etc/rc runs 'kvm_mkdb /netbsd'.  It just hangs
>there, until I hit 'Return' on the DECstation keyboard.  When I hit
>return it goes on as if everything is fine, no messages, and it creates
>a file in /var/db.

Your devices are wrong.  I'm not sure these are all correctl but
here's what I have and things seem to work:

crw-------  1 root      wheel    0,   0 Nov 14 10:25 console
crw-r-----  1 root      kmem     3,   0 Sep 16 14:36 drum
crw-------  1 root      wheel    6,   0 Sep 16 14:36 klog
crw-rw-r--  1 root      wheel    3,   1 Oct 30 13:05 kmem
crw-rw-r--  1 root      wheel    3,   0 Oct 30 13:05 mem
crw-rw-rw-  1 root      wheel    7,   2 Sep 16 14:36 stderr
crw-rw-rw-  1 root      wheel    7,   0 Sep 16 14:36 stdin
crw-rw-rw-  1 root      wheel    7,   1 Sep 16 14:36 stdout
crw-rw-r--  1 root      wheel    2,   0 Oct 30 13:04 tty
crw-rw-r--  1 root      wheel    3,  12 Oct 30 13:05 zero

If I remember correctly, these happen to match nicely with the Ultrix
versions (where they exist) to make booting from an Ultrix partition
easier.

>Possibly related, 'ps' just hangs, too.  ^C kills it.

Yep, same thing.  Confused me for some time, until CGD pointed out
that the reason paswords were failing for me was getpass() opened
/dev/tty directly, and that was more than likely pointing to the wrong
device.

--Michael

--
Michael Graff <explorer@vorpal.com>       NetBSD is the way to go!
PGP key on a key-server near you!         Rayshade the world!