suddenly my netbsd 1.4.2 began holding for about 5 minutes during
boot-up at the point it says "preserving editor files..". i deleted
the files in .virecovery or wherever and it still did this, so i 
commented this section out from my rc file and now it boots up
fine.

at the same time as this problem began happening, there began to
be a similarly long wait to telnet or ftp into my netbsd machine
from my other local computers. this was not solved by my editing
of the rc file. i dunno why this waiting is occuring and would
appreciate any clues so i may not have to reinstall everything
to get it fixed.

it may be related that i typed some cron commands and suddenly
mail start appearing for root in /var/mail/root. it is the only
new or unusual thing i think i did right before these problems.

your humble servant,
O.G.