VERY Strange Problem since last update

[Todd Suess <tsuess@inspace.net>]

Ok, this is a good one.

I ran a recent apt-get dist-upgrade to complete the upgrade needed
to fully bring my slink system up to potato.  Since then, I have noticed
some very strange activity on my system.  Every time I run an apt-get
anything (update, upgrade, etc), the following happens:

1. Apt-get action completes.

2. pdmenu fires up and proceeds to thrash the hard drive for about
    30 minutes, slowly chewing up all available system resources
    (RAM and SWAP), until SWAP is down to 0k available.

3. pdmenu then stops, and all memory returns to normal.

4. afterstep fires up and proceeds to thrash the hard drive for about
    30 minutes, slowly chewing up all available system resources
    (RAM and SWAP), until SWAP is down to 0k available.

5. afterstep then stops, and all memory returns to normal.

**NOTE I am NOT running xwindows at this point, all I have open
is 2 VC's, one which I was running the apt-get on, and another
running top to monitor what is going on.

This sequence continues with the running (at least in top) of all
my installed xwindows managers (fvm, olvm, etc), and when the
last one is done thrashing the hard drive (this has now taken about
4 hours of time) , memory returns to normal, and the system
seems to be completely normal until I run another update, etc.

This is very perplexing, I cannot imagine a reason why any of
my xwindow managers would load without xwindows even being
open (or even configured at this point).  If anyone can suggest
ANY reason why this might be happening, I am very open to
suggestions.

Regards,

Todd