No news yet on reproduction, but I did spot something else interesting when running 'guix home switch-generation' on one of my other machines that's been having similar issues:
> SLoading /gnu/store/b7sbff937mm32lwv1a0dbh4mqhwkvpfn-shepherd.conf. > herd: error: exception caught while executing 'load' on service 'root': > In procedure fport_write: Input/output error > Comparing > /gnu/store/69shsgavrzkb408hvrfi4yjs26z7n112-home/profile/share/fonts and > /gnu/store/dn7kk3d6hhmgjm89y2p3mrlwz0dgkzpy-home/profile/share/fonts... done > (same) > Evaluating on-change gexps. > > On-change gexps evaluation finished. This is another machine whose user shepherd instance is currently in this unresponsive state.