> I'm hoping for some words of wisdom.  This is all NetBSD 1.6.2.
...
> These problems do not occur with NetBSD 2.0, so something has
> changed there that makes it better.  I want the fixes for my
> (production) server, so I don't want to run -current.

NetBSD 1.6.2 was broken sometime after the summer of 2004. First, 
ld.elf_so doesn't work on 604 processors. Second, using a new post-summer 
userland results in a hung system that answers pings but is otherwise 
hung. Something was broken and never fixed.

Have you tried a standard 1.6.2 installation, or are you running a new 
userland and/or kernel?

John Klos