ambiance still refuses to back up:
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  sdc1  lev 0  FAILED [cannot read header: got 0 instead 
of 32768]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  sdc1  lev 0  FAILED [too many dumper retry: "[request 
failed: timeout waiting for ACK]"]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  sdc1  lev 0  FAILED [cannot read header: got 0 instead 
of 32768]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  sdb5  lev 0  FAILED [cannot read header: got 0 instead 
of 32768]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  /     lev 1  FAILED [cannot read header: got 0 instead 
of 32768]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  sdb5  lev 0  FAILED [too many dumper retry: "[request 
failed: timeout waiting for ACK]"]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  sdb5  lev 0  FAILED [cannot read header: got 0 instead 
of 32768]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  /     lev 1  FAILED [too many dumper retry: "[request 
failed: timeout waiting for ACK]"]
  ambiance.med.utah.edu  /     lev 1  FAILED [cannot read header: got 0 instead 
of 32768]

In common-src/protocol.c I have:

#define ACK_WAIT 10 /* time (secs) to wait for ACK - keep short */
#define ACK_TRIES 10 /* num retries after ACK_WAIT timeout */

the maxdumps setting worked great though, I logged in last night
and the load average on ambiance was around 5 with 4 gtars running.
Does anyone have any ideas?

Steve
-- 
Steven J. Backus                        Computer Specialist
University of Utah                      E-Mail:  steven.backus AT utah DOT edu
Biomedical Informatics                  Alternate:  backus AT math.utah DOT edu
391 Chipeta Way -- Suite D150           Office:  801.587.9308
Salt Lake City, UT 84108-1266           http://www.math.utah.edu/~backus