On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 04:18:49PM -0500, Dan Bongert wrote: >> You can also try running ``strace /bin/ls'' to see what is going on. > Funnily enough, running strace will work just fine. Though, as I said, just > about any command will fail -- 'ls' was just for testing purposes. That's funny. Or due to the output of strace changing timing & stress. Try redirecting the strace output to a separate (local filesystem or ramdisk) file, possibly restricted to file operations. Also: check top - you don't have swap or ram problems? -- cu Peter l Jakobi lists at kefk.oa.shuttle.de