Weird Problem with cat

[mcneill]

Here's a weird one folks:

As superuser on one of our machines I have this problem sometimes:

eplrx7 {root} % cat ~mcneill/.login
cat: write error bad file number

eplrx7 {root} % cat /u3/mcneill/.login
---- works fine ----

eplrx7 {root} % exit

(eplrx7:20) cat ~mcneill/.login
---- works fine ----

su again....

eplrx7 {root} % cat ~mcneill/.login
---- works fine ----

The problem is not confined to ~mcneill/.login.  It happens with different
~users trying to cat different files.  The problem seems to have something
to do with expansion of ~.  The operating system is SUNOS 3.5 running yellow
pages.

-- 
    Keith D. McNeill              |    E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Co.
    uunet!eplrx7!mcneill          |    Experimental Station
    (302) 695-7395                |    P.O. Box 80357
                                  |    Wilmington, Delaware 19880-0357