yeah, I did find my problem and it is an odd one. It seems that some bits of my server are "escaping" from out under strace. I can see the spawned thread in 'ps', and I can see its child in ps. What I can not see is that same proc in the strace output (yes, I am doing strace -f). This is an odd one -- I've never seen it and have no idea how it could happen. It's not a truncated strace output issue. The process is just no longer under the control/purview of strace.
Ah, well, bigger fish to fry for now ... ron
