I have upgraded all my alphas to the latest rev. of gdb and bash. While the
software fault still exists, there is no longer a software failure. i.e.
various programs still forget to close fds, but I don't get any hanging
processes anymore.

There is no problem with bash. While csh, tcsh and possbly gdb and sh seem to
be untidy with their file descriptors, the hacking that Andrew has done shows
that bash itself is quite well behaved. I suppose I ought to have a look at
gdb now...

Cheers,
Lloyd