9/1     I have a freebsd stable box, and whenever I try to rebuild
        the ports db or upgrade a port via a package, the load goes
        way up, and the box spawns a new make process every 5 minutes or so
        until eventually the machine locks up and I end up having
        to reboot.  Any idea why? - danh
        \_ You have enough space in your /var directory?
                \_ yes.  gigs and gigs.
        \_ Maybe the core config files used by the ports collection got
           corrupted.  I suggest moving the directory aside and grabbing
           it again and see if that helps.  There are also verbose options
           you can set for debugging these things.