gmc freeze on startup

[nuke bayside net]

the latest gmc (as of this morning, about 8:00am) does not seem to start. a
compile i did last week had the same effect, although one compile in between
worked fine.

gmc reports its happy little "GNU Midnight Commander" line in the term, and
doesn't seem to do anything. here's a stack trace:

(gdb) where
#0  0x40382e31 in nanosleep ()
#1  0x40382daa in sleep ()
#2  0x402d73de in lock ()
#3  0x8094e9e in desktop_init () at gdesktop.c:2146
#4  0x8096c89 in create_panels () at gmain.c:510
#5  0x806222d in setup_mc () at main.c:1829
#6  0x80628b7 in do_nc () at main.c:2194
#7  0x80631fe in main (argc=1, argv=0xbffffd34) at main.c:3016

also, gtop is doing the same thing, but it doesn't seem to be a related
problem.
 _        _  __     __             _ _                                  _
|        / |/ /_ __/ /_____         |       Nuke Skyjumper               |
|       /    / // /  '_/ -_)        |         "Master of the Farce"      |
|_     /_/|_/\_,_/_/\_\\__/        _|_           nuke@bayside.net       _|