I too have been getting panics, lately. i.e.
all kernels that I've compiled since the 12th of Juli
panic regurlarly. My old kernel compiled on the 21st of June
still works though.
I've just been going through the source-changes 
and can't see any relevant changes between the 8th and the 12th
so it must have changed in between. 

it panics in on 'sync - syscall 36' or 
'lookup namei chroot chdr syscall 12'


So if anybody has an idea what could have changed
lately give me a hint.

Cheerio

CONFIGFILE:

#	$NetBSD: GENERIC,v 1.7 1994/12/11 16:20:52 mycroft Exp $
#
#	GENERIC -- everything that's currently supported
#

machine		i386		# architecture, used by config; REQUIRED

# makeoptions	CC="cc -Werror"

options		I586_CPU	# CPU classes; at least one is REQUIRED
#options		MATH_EMULATE	# floating point emulation

#options	DUMMY_NOPS	# speed hack; recommended for OLD machines
options		XSERVER,UCONSOLE
options		INSECURE
options		MACHINE_NONCONTIG

maxusers	32		# estimated number of users
options		TIMEZONE=0	# time zone to adjust RTC time by
options		DST=0		# daylight savings time used by RTC

options		SWAPPAGER	# paging; REQUIRED
options		VNODEPAGER	# mmap() of files
options		DEVPAGER	# mmap() of devices

options		DDB		# in-kernel debugger
options		DIAGNOSTIC	# internally consistency checks
#options		KTRACE		# system call tracing, a la ktrace(1)

options		SYSVMSG		# System V-like message queues
options		SYSVSEM		# System V-like semaphores
options		SYSVSHM		# System V-like memory sharing
#options	SHMMAXPGS=1024	# 1024 pages is the default

options		COMPAT_NOMID	# compatibility with 386BSD, BSDI, NetBSD 0.8,
options		COMPAT_09	# NetBSD 0.9,
options		COMPAT_10	# NetBSD 1.0,
options		COMPAT_43	# and 4.3BSD
options		TCP_COMPAT_42	# TCP bug compatibility with 4.2BSD

options		COMPAT_SVR4	# binary compatibility with SVR4
options		COMPAT_LINUX	# binary compatibility with Linux
options		COMPAT_IBCS2	# binary compatibility with SCO and ISC

options		USER_LDT	# user-settable LDT; used by WINE
options		LKM		# loadable kernel modules

options		FFS		# UFS
options		QUOTA		# UFS quotas
options		LFS		# log-structured file system
options		MFS		# memory file system

options		NFSCLIENT	# Network File System client
options		NFSSERVER	# Network File System server

options		CD9660		# ISO 9660 + Rock Ridge file system
options		MSDOSFS		# MS-DOS file system
#options		FDESC		# /dev/fd
options		FIFO		# FIFOs; RECOMMENDED
#options		KERNFS		# /kern
options		NULLFS		# loopback file system
#options		PORTAL		# ?
#options		PROCFS		# /proc
#options		UMAPFS		# NULLFS + uid and gid remapping
#options		UNION		# union file system

#options	GATEWAY		# packet forwarding
options		MROUTING	# Multicast routing DVMRP
options		INET		# IP + ICMP + TCP + UDP
#options		NS		# XNS
#options		ISO,TPIP	# OSI
#options		EON		# OSI tunneling over IP
#options		CCITT,LLC,HDLC	# X.25

#config		netbsd	swap generic
config		netbsd	root on sd0 swap on sd0 and sd1
#options		GENERIC
options		PCVT_24LINESDEF
options		PCVT_SYSBEEPF=596591
options		WIPUX
#options		SCSI_NCR_MAX_SYNC=4000

isa0	at root
#eisa0	at root
pci0	at root

npx0	at isa? port 0xf0 irq 13	# math coprocessor

vt0	at isa? port 0x60 irq 1		# virtual PC console device

#cy0	at isa? ...

com0	at isa? port 0x3f8 irq 4	# standard PC serial ports
com1	at isa? port 0x2f8 irq 3

#lpt0	at isa? port 0x378 irq 7	# standard PC parallel ports
lpt0	at isa? port 0x378 		# polled ports (safer)
#lpt1	at isa? port 0x278

ncr*	at pci? bus ? dev ?		# NCR 538XX SCSI controllers
scsibus* at ncr?
# ahb*	at eisa? slot ? irq ?		# Adaptec 174[024] SCSI controllers
# scsibus* at ahb?
aha0	at isa? port 0x330 irq ? drq ?	# Adaptec 154[02] SCSI controllers
scsibus* at aha?
sd*	at scsibus? target ? lun ?	# SCSI disk drives
st*	at scsibus? target ? lun ?	# SCSI tape drives
cd*	at scsibus? target ? lun ?	# SCSI CD-ROM drives
ch*	at scsibus? target ? lun ?	# SCSI autochangers

fdc0	at isa? port 0x3f0 irq 6 drq 2	# standard PC floppy controllers
fd*	at fdc? drive ?

ed0	at isa? port 0x300 iomem 0xdc000 irq 10	# WD/SMC, 3C503, and NE[12]000
#ed1	at eisa? slot ? iomem 0xd0000 irq ?	# Eisa/SMC Card in ISA Mode ?

sb0	at isa? port 0x220 irq 7 drq 1	# SoundBlaster
#spkr0	at isa? ...

pseudo-device	loop	1		# network loopback
pseudo-device	bpfilter 8		# packet filter
pseudo-device	sl	2		# CSLIP
pseudo-device	ppp	2		# PPP
pseudo-device	tun	2		# network tunneling over tty

pseudo-device	pty	64		# pseudo-terminals
pseudo-device	tb	1		# tablet line discipline
pseudo-device	vnd	4		# paging to files


-- 
The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity. (unknown)
current	release=doc host=wipux2.wifo.uni-mannheim.de \ "NetBSD-current mirror"
hostbase=/mit/ftp/pub/NetBSD base=/usr prefix=/usr backup delete use-rel-suffix