This may help a bit..

IBM eserver 1 950mhz cpu, redhat 7.1..

#1 - can't help you here.. I don't use cron to schedule backups. I run the
scheduler daemon.

#2 - Web gui works fine.. I don't get the grey box problem you describe.

#3 - Dsmcad - I also get 4 processes so I'm guessing that's normal. In fact
I get 3 "dsmc sched" processes when I start my scheduler. It's not clear to
my why but hey it works..

All in all, no problems backing up either of my two redhat 7.1 servers..

Gerald