BTW, I just managed to reproduce the hang, after a whole afternoon of trying ... only it was with a non-debug build. Sigh. Anyway, it seems my HP machine has a significantly higher probability of showing the problem than my Linux machine --- I have been unable to see the problem in thirty or forty "make checks" on that one.
Let me know if there's any test I could run to confirm your theory, assuming I can make it happen again after I finish rebuilding. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings