Hah. Got it. A failed execl after a fork isn't coming back from the
execl call so that the program can gasp "no way out!" before dying
*gracefully*... Here's a test program you can run on 1.3 Alpha. It
generates a kernel message and a core dump on an alpha, not on an
i386.

The plot sickens...

-matt
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int
main(void)
{
	if (fork() == 0) {
		sleep(2);
		execl ("dufus", "dufus", NULL);
		printf("no way!\n");

	} else {
		printf("parent wait\n");
		sleep(5);
	}
	return (0);
}