portmaster: "Terminated" messages

[anomie]

I am seeing a problem with portmaster on one of my FreeBSD 6.3 workstations. Here's an example from an attempted upgrade of abiword-gnome:

# portmaster -u abiword-gnome
===>>> Gathering distinfo list for installed ports

===>>> Currently installed version: abiword-gnome-2.4.6_3
===>>> Port directory: /usr/ports/editors/abiword
===>>> Launching 'make checksum' for editors/abiword in background
===>>> Gathering dependency list for editors/abiword from ports
===>>> Starting recursive 'make config' check
===>>> Launching child to update unzip-5.52_3
        abiword-gnome-2.4.6_3 >> unzip-5.52_3

===>>> Port directory: /usr/ports/archivers/unzip
===>>> Launching 'make checksum' for archivers/unzip in background
===>>> Gathering dependency list for archivers/unzip from ports
===>>> No dependencies for archivers/unzip
===>>> Continuing 'make config' dependency check for editors/abiword
===>>> Launching child to update devel/goffice04
        abiword-gnome-2.4.6_3 >> devel/goffice04

===>>> Port directory: /usr/ports/devel/goffice04
===>>> Launching 'make checksum' for devel/goffice04 in background
===>>> Gathering dependency list for devel/goffice04 from ports
===>>> Starting recursive 'make config' check
===>>> Launching child to update gnome-vfs-2.20.1
        abiword-gnome-2.4.6_3 >> devel/goffice04 >> gnome-vfs-2.20.1

===>>> Port directory: /usr/ports/devel/gnome-vfs
===>>> Launching 'make checksum' for devel/gnome-vfs in background
===>>> Gathering dependency list for devel/gnome-vfs from ports
===>>> Starting recursive 'make config' check
===>>> Launching child to update avahi-app-0.6.22_1
        abiword-gnome-2.4.6_3 >> devel/goffice04 >> gnome-vfs-2.20.1 >> avahi-app-0.6.22_1

===>>> Port directory: /usr/ports/net/avahi-app
===>>> Launching 'make checksum' for net/avahi-app in background
===>>> Gathering dependency list for net/avahi-app from ports
===>>> Starting recursive 'make config' check
Terminated
Terminated

===>>> Update for gnome-vfs-2.20.1 failed
===>>> Aborting update

===>>> Update for /usr/ports/devel/goffice04 failed
===>>> Aborting update

[ Note that I ran make checksum & make config from /usr/ports/net/avahi-app manually; both worked fine. ]

The problem does not appear to be limited to abiword-gnome. I ran into a very similar issue when attempting to upgrade gettext a few days ago, and I had to install and use portupgrade just to get it upgraded properly.

Some facts about the problem:

• I have two FreeBSD 6.3 workstations running the same portmaster version and with similar (but not identical) application environments. Only one of the workstations is having the problem.
• The portmaster version I'm using is the latest available in ports now - v2.5.
• My /etc/make.conf consists only of this:
  

  PERL_VER=5.8.8
  PERL_VERSION=5.8.8

• I am not using a portmaster.rc / .portmasterrc file and I am not setting any of the portmaster-related environment variables in root's shell environment.

My friend google pointed me to this (loosely related) email thread: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/f...ch/047557.html. The most useful thing I gleaned from that was a script to test whether root's shell is allowing lots of children to spawn. (And, yes, it is. I ran the script and spawned > 100 children.)

Has anyone run into this with portmaster? Any ideas for troubleshooting further?