sudo/ppp and other cmds dont work

[Chris Zubrzycki <beren@mac.com>]

I have a very odd and bad problem: I had to shut down my server for 2 
days (construction), and now some programs do not work, notably sudo and 
something in the ppp script....syslog does not notice anything, but i 
cannot ctrl-c,z, or kill -9 these processes. this makes things difficult 
as i cant get online with this box. i am using woody/2.4.14-xfs with a 
home-brewed kernel. I would rather not re-install, but I will, if I must.

I have tried re-installing sudo and the pam libs, but I am at a loss. a 
reboot helped some things (bind), but not everything.
this is all on xfs.

thanks for the help.

output of plog:
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]: ^M
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]: PROTOCOL: LAP-M^M
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]: ^M
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]: COMPRESSION: V.42BIS^M
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]: ^M
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]: CONNECT
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]:  -- got it
Feb 13 04:06:14 lorien chat[942]: send (\d)
Feb 13 04:06:15 lorien pppd[940]: Serial connection established.
Feb 13 04:06:15 lorien pppd[940]: using channel 1

---
and this is where it hangs

-chris zubrzycki
==========================================================================
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