RAID5 resync hangs device (but system is ok)

[presto8]

This is a really strange problem and I don't know if anybody can help with a solution, but I thought I would post it anyway:

I am running Gentoo with a software RAID5 setup (3 drives, ext3 filesystem). If the system is shutdown improperly, the RAID array comes up unclean on the next boot and a resync is initiated.

Here's the weird part: I am able to mount the device (/dev/md0), but any access to the filesystem will hang the parent process. It doesn't hang the system, and I am able to use a different tty, but any attempt to ctrl-c the hung process does not work.

Once the resync is complete, I am able to access the RAID device's filesystem normally.

I know that RAID5 is able to run in "degraded mode" and allow access to the filesystem while a background reconstruction is happening. In fact, on an earlier kernel build on this exact system, this worked perfectly. For the last 9 months or so, however, my kernel builds have not worked properly. Unfortunately, I do not have the .config file from the working kernel build and am thus unable to troubleshoot using that.

Has anybody else encountered this or have any tips to offer? I can provide any and all config files from my system if it would help.

Thanks