I can corroborate this bug. I just upgraded to module-init-tools 3.7-pre9-1, and oss-compat 0.0.4+nmu3, and had the exact same thing happen to me.
I found that the minimal way out of it was to comment out any line in any /etc/modprobe.d/* file that began with "install" and referenced any sound-related module. Once I did that, I got the oss-compat postinst to run to completion cleanly. Best I can surmise from my process list trace is that anytime you try to modprobe module A, and module A has an install command of the form: install A modprobe --ignore-install A && { modprobe --quiet B } and module B depends on module A based on modules.dep, then the infinite loop strikes: modprobe A install-command for A modprobe --ignore-install A modprobe --quiet B modprobe A install-command for A modprobe --ignore-install A modprobe --quiet B modprobe A .... and so on. It appears to me (in my uneducated, have not looked into it in depth opinion), that "modprobe A" is running the install command even if module A is already installed. That would be a sufficient condition to trigger this bug, when an install rule of the form I mentioned above is present. (BTW, Matthew: killall -STOP /sbin/modprobe works wonders in this situation. ;-) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org