strange hanging behaviour

[Andrew Gallagher <andrew.gallagher@earthling.net>]

Hi there,

I have been using zsh version 3.0.5 for a long time and it has never
given me trouble until now. On one particular Linux (Red Hat 5.0, 2.0.36
kernel) machine it has started to exhibit strange behaviour for no
immediately apparent reason. When my .zlogin asks me what terminal I am
using it accepts input properly, but once at the prompt I can only type
one or two characters before the shell input hangs. If I hit return
_twice_ then the shell gloops up the character buffer, does what I typed
and continues, but then hangs once again when I start typing the next
command.
This behaviour only happens in zsh - if I run ksh or tcsh (but not
another zsh) from within my misbehaving zsh, everything works fine, only
to break again once I exit and get back out into zsh. I have removed all
my dotfiles to no avail. The system config files are distribution. Login
method (telnet, ssh, etc.) makes no difference.

Anyone got any ideas? By the way, this all started on the day of the
eclipse. Spooky eh?

--
Andrew Gallagher
Dept. of Applied Maths
Queen's University of Belfast
http://members.tripod.com/~AndrewGallagher/id.html