I left a build of a bunch of libraries and programs running over night. This
morning I find that the build has stalled, with a cc waiting on disk I/O
according to 'ps aux'. Looking at the rest of the ps output, there was
a cron job run an hour after cc that also stalled.

USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TT  STAT STARTED       TIME COMMAND
jb         411  0.0  1.0   432  240 p1  R+    7:31AM    0:00.01 ps -aux
root         1  0.0  0.6   424  144 ??  Is   10:15AM    0:00.44 /sbin/init
root         2  0.0  0.1     0    0 ??  DL   10:15AM    0:07.16 (pagedaemon)
root        46  0.0  0.0   224    0 ??  IWs  10:15AM    0:00.09 portmap
root        51  0.0  0.0   512    0 ??  IWs  10:15AM    0:00.22 mountd
root        53  0.0  0.0   168    0 ??  IWs  10:15AM    0:00.06 nfsd: master (n
root        55  0.0  0.0   144    0 ??  IW   10:15AM   20:01.63 nfsd: server (n
root        56  0.0  0.0   144    0 ??  IW   10:15AM    2:49.00 nfsd: server (n
root        57  0.0  0.0   144    0 ??  IW   10:15AM    0:04.62 nfsd: server (n
root        58  0.0  0.0   144    0 ??  IW   10:15AM    0:00.16 nfsd: server (n
root        61  0.0  0.0   120    0 ??  IW   10:15AM    0:03.77 nfsiod -n 4
root        62  0.0  0.0   120    0 ??  IW   10:15AM    0:00.17 nfsiod -n 4
root        63  0.0  0.0   120    0 ??  IW   10:15AM    0:00.00 nfsiod -n 4
root        64  0.0  0.0   120    0 ??  IW   10:15AM    0:00.00 nfsiod -n 4
root        73  0.0  0.9   264  208 ??  Ss   10:15AM    0:02.22 syslogd
root        76  0.0  0.6   616  144 ??  Is   10:15AM    0:01.51 timed
root        90  0.0  0.2    72   24 ??  Ss   10:15AM    0:32.11 update
root        92  0.0  0.6   528  136 ??  Is   10:15AM    0:05.77 cron
root        96  0.0  0.6   320  144 ??  Ss   10:15AM    0:02.45 routed -q
root       100  0.0  0.0   456    0 ??  IWs  10:15AM    0:00.10 lpd
root       103  0.0  0.0   424    0 ??  IWs  10:15AM    0:00.26 inetd
root       117  0.0  0.0   288    0 E0  IWs+ 10:15AM    0:00.09 /usr/libexec/ge
root       124  0.0  0.2   440   40 ??  I    10:30AM    0:10.29 rlogind
jb         125  0.0  1.7   760  416 p0  Is+  10:30AM    0:02.81 -sh (sh)
root       169  0.0  0.3   440   56 ??  S    12:22PM    0:12.40 rlogind
jb         170  0.0  1.6   760  400 p1  Ss   12:22PM    0:03.63 -sh (sh)
jb        5911  0.0 13.3  7504 3424 p1  IN    4:14PM  135:42.10 bld dev
jb         251  0.0  1.0   240  232 p1  D     1:03AM    0:00.17 cc -c -Wall -no
root       270  0.0  0.7   528  152 ??  I     2:00AM    0:00.05 CRON (cron)
root       273  0.0  1.2   632  296 ??  Is    2:00AM    0:00.14 /bin/sh -c /bin
root       276  0.0  1.4   656  336 ??  I     2:00AM    0:00.12 /bin/sh /etc/da
root       278  0.0  0.4   104   88 ??  I     2:00AM    0:00.11 tee /var/log/da
root       279  0.0  1.3   472  320 ??  D     2:00AM    0:00.16 mail -s daily o
root       283  0.0  0.4   328   88 ??  D     2:00AM    0:00.06 . (find)
root         0  0.0  0.1     0    0 ??  DLs  10:15AM    0:00.33 (swapper)

Filesystem  512-blocks     Used    Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/sd0a       107614    52252    49980    51%    /
/dev/sd0d       579700   434594   116120    79%    /usr
/dev/sd0e      1186864   398554   728966    35%    /u
/dev/sd1a      1993692  1834038    59968    97%    /u2
/@cimaxp        100764    81656     9030    90%    /cimaxp
/usr@cimaxp    1573610  1222244   194004    86%    /cimaxp/usr
/u@cimaxp      3982650  3289262   295122    92%    /cimaxp/u
/@cimhp        1868006  1402612   278592    83%    /cimhp

The compile would have been accessing sd0 and sd1.

Anything I can do to resolve this?

-- 
John Birrell                                CIMlogic Pty Ltd
jb@cimlogic.com.au                          119 Cecil Street
Ph  +61  3 9690 6900                        South Melbourne Vic 3205
Fax +61  3 9690 6650                        Australia
Mob +61 18  353  137