[ NOTE: this may sound sun3-related, but I'm almost willing to bet it's
  something in MI code causing this. ]

At work, I have a Sun 3/260 running diskless (because I haven't installed 
the latest-greatest sun3 boot code yet) that, under heavy load (well, 
building the tree), hangs solid from time to time.  I noticed this at 
home on my 3/50 before I installed a disk on it.

JT mentioned that this has happened to him, as well.  It seems to only 
happen on diskless machines with small memories while doing something.

My hypothesis is that a packet is getting dropped somewhere in the NFS 
transaction.  My first thought on testing this is to force the swap mount 
to a TCP-type and see if that helps any.  But, before I try that, I'd 
like to get input from some other people, and hear other ideas as to what 
might be the problem.

Ciao.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939