>> both have killed off long-running bc jobs with a "Profiling
>> timer expired" message.
>
> I believe I've just fixed it (mips/mips_machdep.c rev 1.37).
> It seems that this was caused by use of uninitialized memory
> for the u-area, so it depends on previous use of the machine's
> physical memory.

Oh...  This explains lots.  Since last Summar several NetBSD/mips
developers have experienced a bunch of inconsistent behaviours of
-current kernels.  Mananori Tsubai, a NetBSD/newsmips guy, concluded
at that time there must be uninitialized memory access somewhere
around NetBSD/mips common code because booting newly compiled kernel
causes trouble, but booting after power-off-on cycle or booting same
kernel seldom caused any trouble, i.e., "behaviours depends on
previous use of the machine's physical memory."

Tohru Nishimura
Nara Institute of Science and Technology