selfcheck hanging

OK, another client that was already installed this time. I've checkedthrough the client's config, file ownership, xinetd config etc and itall appears to be right (based on my previous postings), it wasinstalled as 'amanda' so this user is the same on the server andclient. When I ran amcheck the first time I received 'amandad busy', sochecked on the client and found:


amanda    8755  0.0  0.2  2192  748 ?        S    11:43   0:00 amandad

amanda 8756 0.0 0.2 1948 748 ? S 11:43 0:00/usr/lib/amanda/selfcheckamanda 8757 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? Z 11:43 0:00 [amandad<defunct>]


If I kill these processes it returns

WARNING: hermes.deanst.rroom.net: selfcheck reply timed out.

but then the above processes are, once again, present.

/tmp/amanda/selfcheck.[date].debug reveals

selfcheck: time 0.006: checking disk /data
selfcheck: time 0.010: device /data
selfcheck: time 0.010: disk "/data" OK
selfcheck: time 0.010: amdevice "/data" OK
selfcheck: time 0.010: device "/data" OK
selfcheck: time 0.011: checking disk /etc

so what could be causing the selfcheck to fail checking /etc... any ideas?