Turns out it's real, but has nothing to do with svn, apr, or serf. Rather, the culprit is "options rotate" in /etc/resolv.conf. Remove it, problem goes away.
( @BenReser, iiuc, you did NOT try that in your tests ... ) It's a known bug in glibc, and, afaict, has NOT yet been patched on my distro (opensuse). fyi, I've posted a bug (https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=848783) with referenced to other sightings, and a patch @redhat. darx
